


A Supernatural Occurrence

by NovelistAngel23



Series: The Blockbuster Ghost [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Blockbuster - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, Ghost Jean, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Minor Violence, Nightmares, POV First Person, Slow Build, VHS Tapes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 05:38:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3238358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovelistAngel23/pseuds/NovelistAngel23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the summer of 2013, and I was still there. Stuck in a sort of limbo, convinced that nothing would change--content that nothing could change.</p><p>But one fateful day, in a tiny town, in a rundown Blockbuster, I found Jean Kirschtein.</p><p>Or, rather, the VHS he haunted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Plastic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marco goes about his day as usual until he finds something mysterious that kind of makes him freak out.

To this day, I’m convinced it was a supernatural occurrence that, despite being exhausted and late and ten miles over the speed limit, I didn’t hit the tiny white Bulldog puppy that raced out onto the road in front of my beat up green truck.

I skidded to a stop and practically leapt out of my car, mind racing at the thought of having to scrape a puppy off of my bumper. I liked puppies. They were cute and nice and soft, and oh gosh, I was a monster, I hit a freaking puppy.

But the sound of whimpers coming from under my car assured me that the puppy was very much alive.

I dropped to my knees and leaned down to look at the cowering creature underneath my car. She had bright eyes and a tiny nose. Her ears were like a bat’s, sticking straight out and brushing the metal underside of my car.

“Oh, my gosh,” I gasped, resting my forehead against the pavement and laughing breathlessly. “Oh, my gosh, you’re alive, thank goodness.”

I looked around, but as usual, the street was empty of other cars. It was the only reason I’d dared speeding. The town I lived in was small, and this was only one of many tiny neighborhoods that no one actually seemed to live in.

Convinced I wasn’t blocking the way much for any cars that might come by, I twisted around to lie on my side and reach under the car for the puppy. There was a shiny red collar around her neck, and I figured it’d be safest for her to get home rather than running around the road, even if there probably wouldn’t be another car, ever.

She just whimpered and scooted away from me. I reached a little further, stretching my fingers. “Come on, puppy,” I whispered. “Come on, it’s okay, I won’t hurt you.”

My fingertip poked her tiny wet nose, and she squeaked, moving as if to bite me. I wrenched my hand back just in time.

We watched each other for a moment as I brought my hand back towards me. She seemed to be glaring at me. I groaned, resting my face in my hand. “Oh, my gosh, I don’t have time for this,” I whimpered, hoping I was right about no one actually living in that neighborhood, because I probably looked insane.

She didn’t seem to care about my puny human pleas. She settled back on her haunches, tucking herself in so that she didn’t hit the underside of my car.

I turned my head to check my watch. 9:38. Fudge. I was already forty minutes late, and I knew for a fact that being late three times in one week meant late shift.

There were not words to describe late shift. Eerie? Painful? Sleepless? Pointless, more like it. No one came to Blockbuster in the middle of the night in 2013. We didn’t even carry VHS tapes anymore. It wasn’t even retro.

I knew Levi secretly liked it when Eren or I were late to work. Late shift was basically cleaning shift, and it was cheaper for current employees to clean up than it was to hire more employees. There really wasn’t a point to hiring more employees with Netflix and Redbox around, anyway.

I looked at the puppy for a moment longer, contemplating my options. Hightail it out of there and pray Levi wouldn’t notice me sneaking in through the back. Move the car away from the puppy and save her when she wasn’t underneath my car anymore. Or…

I twisted my lips at her. “Today is your lucky day,” I sighed, pushing myself back up to my feet.

I popped open my car door and leaned over the driver’s seat to reach my paper bag lunch. It was kind of pathetic. A browning green apple, a ham sandwich (no cheese or condiments or anything that should be on a ham sandwich), and a bag of beef jerky.

I picked out a piece, a big one, and prayed it was okay for dogs to eat beef jerky. It seemed safe. No chunks of fat, no bones. Dogs ate beef jerky, right? I’d never owned a dog. A cat, once, but she had been my parents’ responsibility while I was off at college. That had… fallen through.

I knelt back to the ground again, setting the rest of the bag on the driver’s seat. “Okay, let’s try this,” I grunted, pressing against the road.

It was summer, but that town was always a little cold. The asphalt road never really warmed up, at least not until late in the day. I avoided heading outside after work. It wasn’t like there was much to do around town, anyway. Sleep was more enticing.

I reached the beef jerky out towards the puppy, and she was instantly interested. She poked her nose towards the jerky, tentatively leaning up to lick at it. I grinned and glanced around again. No cars were coming, thank goodness. Turning my attention back to her, I started to scoot sideways, keeping her gaze on the jerky in one outstretched hand.

She followed me, and the relief in my chest was indescribable. I’d find her owner real quick, and then she’d be safe, and I wouldn’t be sitting at the front desk all day, wondering if some other idiot came around and hurt her by accident.

When she poked out from under the car and trotted after me on her tiny legs, I sat up a little and lunged forward to wrap her up in my arms. At first, she squirmed and complained with indignant barks, but when I handed her the beef jerky, she perked up significantly.

I swung my car door shut with my hip and resolved to head for the first person I saw.

If there were a person.

The houses all around me were void of people, and I knew I’d have to walk. I twisted my arm around to look at my watch again. 9:46. Fuuudge.

I grimaced and reminded myself that the sooner I got it over with, the sooner I’d be at work.

I picked my way up the road, searching left and right for any sign of movement. White houses, with yellow and blue and pink interspersed here and there, spread out before me. The only movement for a while was the shadow of the clouds across the paint, the rustle of grass in the wind. I figured it was too early. I knew for a fact I would’ve preferred to be in bed until three o’ clock.

Levi didn’t work me very hard, if I was being honest. Sleeping just sounded better than anything else. Movement was overrated, and even though I worked at Blockbuster, I preferred Netflix and old VHS tapes.

The puppy was squirming again, having downed the jerky. Goodness, I hadn’t known puppies could eat so fast. It had been a big piece too.

I reached up to read the tag on her collar. It just had a snowflake design on it, with the name Snowball printed in all capital letters underneath. Cute name but not very helpful.

“Who are you?”

I jumped at the sound of a young voice and whipped around to see a girl on a bike behind me. How she’d gotten there without my noticing, I will never know. She was glaring at Snowball in my arms, a very exasperated look on her face.

I cleared my throat but stuttered anyway. “U-um, my name is Marco. Marco Bodt?”

“You don’t live here, do you?” she sighed.

I blinked at her. “Uh, no,” I answered, shaking my head. “No, I live in town, just not this neighborhood.” I glanced at Snowball in my arms, attempting in vain to stretch up and lick at my chin. “Hey, um, you know this dog?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Yeah, look, I’m not an idiot,” she muttered. “You can keep your dog, creep.”

I blinked at her. Creep? I was nineteen, hardly old enough to look like a creep. I was almost insulted but, honestly, more annoyed and worried about ducking into work at one o’ clock and having to face the wrath of Levi Ackerman when I got there. So, I let her have her way.

“No, look, this isn’t my dog,” I tried to explain. “Her name’s, like, Snowball, and I almost hit her earlier—“

“You what?” she gasped. Her face took on an almost horrified expression.

I grimaced and lifted up Snowball in both hands. “No, no, she’s fine, don’t worry. I’m trying to find her owner, okay?” I sighed, pulling Snowball back into my arms. She snuggled into me, and I almost wished I had the money to support a pet of my own; it would’ve been less lonely. “I don’t want her running around in the road and getting hurt.”

The girl squinted at me, her jaw snapping shut. “Yeah, okay, sure.” She sighed, swinging her leg over her bike so she could walk towards me. “She looks kind of like the Blouse’s dog.”

I grinned. “Blouse? Blouse, okay, do you know where they live?” I asked, looking around.

She rolled her eyes. “They’re never in this early in the day,” she muttered. She eyed Snowball and then crossed her arms, letting her bike lean against her side. “Here, I’ll take her and get her home for you.” Her eyes shifted over to my watch, and then she smirked at me. “I get the feeling you’re supposed to be at work or something.”

I grimaced again. “Well, you’re right about that,” I muttered.

I hesitated for a beat before handing her the dog. I didn’t know her. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth. She didn’t seem to like me much. But then, I really couldn’t leave a puppy in my car all day, especially if I ended up having to work the late shift like I was dreading.

After a quick, reassuring breath, I let Snowball slide into her arms. Her eyes lit up immediately as she cuddled the tiny animal to her chest. I felt better about handing the puppy over at the sight. “Okay, make sure she gets home, got it?” I reminded her.

She nodded absently, and I wondered if she’d ever had a pet anything before, let alone a dog. She looked enamored.

I didn’t have time to ponder it. I gave a quick wave to her and Snowball before racing past her and back to my car. I lifted my arm to check my watch one last time. 9:51. Fudge on a Popsicle stick.

 

“You’re late, Bodt.”

Levi was standing in front of the glass doors of the building, and I wondered why I’d ever thought I’d be able to sneak in. Levi lived for assigning the late shift. I assumed he had a cleaning kink or something. It was really the only thing I knew about Levi, other than that he sold old movies on the black market out of the back of the Blockbuster.

I’d been inside Levi’s office only twice in my life. It had been more than meticulously clean; it had been almost nauseatingly spotless.

I remember that I’d spent the entire twenty-minute drive in my car coming up with a good explanation for being late. It was all very justified in my head. But the second I saw Levi, it all flew out of my mind.

Levi was five foot three, compared to my five foot ten and Eren’s five foot seven. But he was terrifying—like a demon imp or something. I could imagine him with gleaming horns.

I stood a few feet in front of him, holding my paper bag lunch and book to my chest and feeling for all intents and purposes like a child being scolded. My mouth stuttered open and closed, attempting to voice something—anything, honestly. But the words all died in my throat, impossible to get out.

Levi just looked me up and down, lacking a smile as if he wasn’t completely enjoying making a legal adult feel like a law-breaking child. He sighed, voice almost pitying. “You know what late three days in one week means, Bodt.”

I grimaced, scared to look up at him. So I kept my gaze trained on my beat up, black dress shoes. Childish. Humiliating.

“Late shift…?” I murmured. I made it a question, because I didn’t want to sound too annoyed.

He grunted softly as he turned on his heel. How he managed to look so menacing in the blue polo and khaki pants Blockbuster uniform was beyond me. The glass door squeaked as he pulled it open. I noted that I’d probably have to be oiling the hinges later that night. “I guess so.”

I watched him through the glass doors, only ever brave enough to look up when he wasn’t staring at me with that horror movie glare.

Eren was already sitting at the front desk. I suppressed a tired laugh as he scrambled off the desk and into the chair when Levi snapped at him to get down.

I contemplated, in vain, the idea of fleeing back into my car and running back home to pop in an old video at home and fall asleep to the sound of old laughter. But I was nothing if not responsible when I could be, so I pulled the door open and headed inside instead.

Eren sent me an apologetic grin as I sidled in beside him behind the desk. “Shit, man, late shift?” he asked.

I didn’t answer right away, opting instead to kick my feet up onto the desk and plopping my book on my face. He whistled in reply. There were some things that didn’t need saying.

I tilted my head back over the back of my chair just in time to see the shades of Levi’s office window snap shut. I wisely slid my feet off the desk, planting them firmly on the floor instead.

“So what day is it?” Eren asked, and I heard the squeak of him settling into his chair as I kicked myself back and forth along the carpet floor on the wheels of my own chair.

I sighed, reaching into my pocket to drag out the old block of a phone that I’d been calling my own for—oh. Almost a year by then. A whole year. Kind of hurt to think about.

It was a plain black flip phone with a classic keypad that took an extra two minutes to text on because my thumbs were bigger than the buttons and I never pressed hard enough. There were minor scratches on the outside, but I prided myself on the flawless, crack-less screen. The time and date shone at me in dull white letters. “Tuesday,” I answered, flicking the phone shut with an audible snap and pushing it back inside my pocket. “Annie’s day.”

He groaned, loud and exhausted, and I spared him a tiny laugh. “I _hate_ Annie,” he muttered into his arms as he plopped his face into them.

“You don’t hate her,” I mused, sliding back and forth again and staring at the book in my lap. “She just scares you.”

He mumbled something, and I hummed questioningly at him, flipping my book over in my hands to read the back cover for the tenth time in the last few days since I’d uncovered it in the cardboard box of my parents’ stuff.

Eren turned his head to face me. The mischievous look on his face told me all I needed to know before he even spoke. He wiggled his eyebrows at me, blue-green eyes sparkling as he widened them and his grin. “Levi scares _you_.”

I hadn’t braced myself enough for it. There was a slamming sound on the window behind us, the sound of a fist pounding vehemently on glass, and we both nearly leapt out of our seats.

Eren held back a cackle as I settled back into my seat, holding my book to my chest as my heartbeat slowed back to normal. I stuck my tongue out at him, scrunching up my face. I glanced back at the window before leaning forward to whisper, “Levi scares _everyone_.”

And he couldn’t argue.

Days had a tendency to drag on at Blockbuster. I’d been working there for a year, which was a few months longer than Eren who’d started at the beginning of the summer, and I knew from experience that any kind of heat made the store uncomfortably hot and any kind of cool made the store unbearably cold. That day was heat, and Eren rolled his polo sleeves up into tank top sleeves until Levi snapped at him to pull them down.

Levi only came out of his office to use the bathroom or go out back. “Out back” was the alleyway behind the Blockbuster, which Eren and I were sure was used to sell old VHS tapes to drug dealers. Okay, I’m willing to admit that it was a ridiculous theory, but he went out with movies and came back with money, so…

Other than the occasional appearance of our reclusive boss and the one-sided games Eren attempted with me, every day was verily the same as the last. No one ever came in. Ever.

We had two regulars, and they were our only customers. One was Annie, our Tuesday, and she was quiet. Disturbingly quiet. Thursday was Armin, but I wasn’t sure if he counted as a loyal customer, because I was pretty sure he only came because he and Eren were best friends. He borrowed movies, sure, but I didn’t doubt that once summer ended and Eren left for college that he would disappear as well.

Despite the long day stretched ahead of me, I decided against reading the book. I’d opened it, once, to the very first page, with the copyright information justified into one straight paragraph of numbers and letters that never processed for me. I’d never been a good researcher in school. Maybe that was just an excuse, though.

My mother’s handwriting had littered the first page, however. Her flowery name in unmistakable handwriting, Carmen Maria Bodt and something in Spanish that I decided not to read.

I’d set the book down and wondered if I could lose it in the store somehow that night.

I saw the door open while Eren was hiding away in the bathroom, probably messing with the tattoo he’d gotten without his mother’s knowledge, somewhere on his hip. It was a set of wings, blue and white. He told me it symbolized freedom. I didn’t get it.

Annie looked across the building at me. I waved and flashed her a smile. She just nodded and headed directly to the horror section. I wondered sometimes how she did it. Watching horror was all fine and dandy, but once a week? And how on earth did she find a new one each week? It was beyond me.

I remembered with a hint of satisfaction that the horror section was hidden from view from the bathrooms. Eren wouldn’t know she’d come in already.

As if on cue, Eren came traipsing back into the room, a wide grin on his face. “Hey, Marco, you know what I was thinking?” he started, sliding in front of the desk and leaning over it to level his gaze with mine.

I smiled and shrugged, wondering how far he’d get before Annie came up behind him. “What’s the newest plot?” I asked, flipping absently through the pages of my book. It was red. Black letters for the title. A mystery, I assumed, from the title: The Absence of a Victim. It seemed corny, but then, I hadn’t read it yet.

Eren lifted one hand and swirled his fingers along the wood grain of the desk, dangerously close to my own fingers. I slid my hand away from his reach. “I was thinking,” he said, retracting his fingers and trying to school his expression into something nonchalant instead of hurt. “You know, that you should get a tattoo, too.”

I merely cocked an eyebrow at him. “Me, with a tattoo?” I asked.

All of the cons played out easily in my head. Expensive, pointless, painful. I didn’t see how Eren thought it would be cool. I had a feeling it was just to be rebellious, because his mother had forbidden him from getting one despite him finally being a legal adult. If his mom didn’t kill him, I suspected his adopted sister Mikasa would.

“Don’t worry, Marco,” he laughed, bright eyes lifting to meet mine. “I’ll go with you. Y-you know, like we’ll go together.”

I flicked my eyes to the side of him, where Annie was standing with her movies. Eren continued.

“I could even, like, choose one for you,” he offered, voice growing more and more eager and yet more shy. “I’m pretty good at that all, I mean.”

Annie cleared her throat, and I was thankful for it. I didn’t know how to respond. Eren had tried a million different approaches, and I hadn’t yet come up with a way to tell him no. I was kind of afraid to, avoiding it. I’d been living in town for a year, and the only friend I had was him, even if he was only really available for Friday pizza nights. I couldn’t lose that.

Eren practically leapt over the counter, shrieking in shock. There was a blaring knock from the office window, and I choked back a giggle. Eren cursed and glared at me before shuffling out of Annie’s way.

I smiled politely at her and took her DVD and card. I wondered how long she’d been coming to Blockbuster, since she’d been a regular long before I’d ever started working there. I wondered who’d worked there before me, because it had always seemed like the place was carried solely on my shoulders.

I rang her up, and she already had her money ready. She’d long since memorized the prices. I attempted to tell her how long she could keep the movie, but she just nodded and walked away.

Eren glared after her as I waved goodbye. “See you, Annie,” I called.

She grunted something in response, which was more than I usually got anyway.

“What the fuck, Marco,” Eren deadpanned, turning his disdainful grimace on me once the door swung shut behind her. “What the actual fuck.”

I winced and shrugged apologetically, flipping my wrist over to check out my watch. 1:15.

Feeling his glare on me the entire way there, I leaned down to pull my meager lunch out of the bag I’d placed at my feet earlier that day. “Jerky?” I offered, holding out the last few pieces that I’d saved instead of handing to Snowball.

Eren’s gaze softened into a smile. He looked nice when he smiled like that. It just seemed more natural. But he always looked angry or annoyed or smug instead. “Yeah,” he sighed, pulling out the smallest piece from my handful. “Yeah, okay, thanks.”

I leaned back in my chair and muttered, “When you going to head home?” whilst digging through the lunch bag in my hands.

He hopped up onto the desk and leaned back on his hands, chewing on the jerky in his mouth and not bothering to swallow before telling me, “I’ll play late shift with you.”

I sighed but didn’t argue, because I knew he wouldn’t listen to it anyway. When he got an idea in his head, it never got out. And I still didn’t know how to refuse anyway. “Kay,” I murmured, twirling my apple in my hand before taking a tentative bite.

 

“Eren, you know you don’t have to clean with me,” I sighed, digging out the broom and dusters from the supply closet.

Eren scoffed, dragging the broom from my hands. “You think I’d leave a fragile princess such as yourself to clean by yourself?” he gasped, voice indignant.

I huffed out a laugh, pulling the broom back. I trailed my eyes through the store. Only a few lights were on, just enough for us not to trip and fall on our faces, because Levi was a penny-pincher and we were technically closed anyway. It lent the store a ghostly look. None of the aisles were actually lit up enough to navigate through, so we had to go by the shine of light on the metal racks.

I waved my hand towards the horror section, the only one that anyone had gone through that day, and looked at Eren. “You organize the movies, prince charming.” He gaped at the words. I just smiled. “I’ll take care of the actual cleaning.”

As much as Levi tried to condition him, Eren wasn’t a clean person. He never picked up after himself, never brushed his hair, never chewed his food before talking, even bit at his nails to the point of bleeding. So letting him do my cleaning for me wasn’t an option.

I settled the broom against my shoulder and scanned the aisles for any obvious messes. As I moved through each aisle, I brushed along the racks with the duster. It always came back clean, but the miniscule particles of dust that clung to the tops of each DVD case were sure to be caught by Levi anyway. Sometimes I wondered if clean freak was a disease, because if so, I was starting to come down with it. I swore I could see the swirl of dust in the air, lit up by the pale shimmer of the lights above each aisle.

I swept up some trash that I knew was Eren’s, but I didn’t complain about it. It gave the whole ordeal a point, if I was being honest. The only thing worse than staying late to clean up was staying late to sit there and do nothing.

It took a while, mostly out of boredom. I knew Eren was messing around with the movies, mixing them around and reorganizing them to keep himself busy. It was 11:00, and we had at least another hour left.

With a groan of defeat, I collapsed against the desk and left the broom leaning against my side. “Tired already?” Eren called.

I shook my head, although I knew he couldn’t see it. I wasn’t tired, just bored and exasperated. Of course, sleep wasn’t such a horrible prospect.

I let out some kind of grunt that he took as reassurance that I was fine. He didn’t ask again, turning back to his movies. If I tilted my head, I could see him squinting at DVDs, probably wondering which one he would check out when time came to leave. He only ever borrowed movies when he worked late shift. I figured it was because choosing one filled up some time.

“Treasure Planet is an underrated classic,” I called out to him.

He smiled at the movies in his hands and then set down Aladdin in favor of Treasure Planet. I nodded my approval, tilting my head back to look up at the ceiling.

The ceiling was made up of tiles like the ones in a school building or a hospital. They were a strange off-white and flecked with grey dots, but none of them were covered in abstract paintings by kindergartners or the bubble letter names of high school students. It had always seemed back then that my class was the only one that never got a chance to paint the ceiling, but I figured that was because the tiles had all been decorated years before I’d ever gotten to the school.

I tilted my head to the side towards Levi’s office and found myself staring at the knocked ajar door. He had utmost faith that neither of us would dare go inside and make a mess. Not faith in us, of course. Faith in his ability to scare us off even when he wasn’t there.

“Hey, Eren?”

Eren let out a grunt. When I looked over, I saw that he was too busy trying to reach a movie to really pay attention to whatever I said. “I’m going to go clean up the office,” I dared.

Eren whipped around to me, his voice spluttering in shock, and I figured I’d been wrong about him not listening to me. “What, no, Marco, that’s crazy!”

I shook my head, stretching my arms up and popping my back before pushing myself back up to head for the room. “I’m not going to touch anything,” I assured him, setting the broom back down.

I doubted there would be anything to touch in the first place. Levi always kept his room spotless clean. At least, that was how it had been a few months before when he’d first hired Eren and called us both into his office to make sure we behaved together. I was just curious and bored, and I knew it.

I sucked in a deep breath before sliding through the crack in the door, slipping into the room with light footsteps like a spy. There was nothing on the floor for me to accidentally knock over anyway. Levi’s office hardly looked like a place he spent hour after hour in. The desk was empty, except for a neat pile of papers and three pencils of equal length lined up exactly parallel to each other.

And a VHS tape settled perfectly justified on top of the papers.

Curiosity had a sudden vice grip on me, calling me forward. I tiptoed towards the desk and leaned forward to see the tape more clearly. It was just an ordinary black tape, but there was no tag to explain what it was. A home video? An old movie?

“Marco, don’t!” Eren cried, bursting through the door behind me.

I turned to look at him and tilted an eyebrow at his crazed expression. “I’m not touching anything,” I teased, before turning back to the tape. “But look at this thing.”

He stayed glued to the doorway, eyes shifting warily around the room. “Marco, I have a serious question.”

 I hummed questioningly in response, contemplating all the possible reasons Levi could have for keeping a VHS with no title on it. No one would buy it. It looked pretty beat up. I highly doubted he had a VCR to play it on.

“Do you, like, have a death wish or something?”

I snorted, my hand dropping to touch the tape, and Eren let out a squeak of shock. I shook my head at him. “I’m not going to mess anything up, Eren. Don’t worry,” I assured.

I thought for a moment about whether or not it would be a bad idea to actually pick up the tape, but something just told me to.

So I did.

I could practically feel Eren hold his breath, and my own chest felt tight with the lack of air being brought into them. The tape felt cold in my hands, as if it hadn’t been touched in years, and I almost felt bad for it.

I flipped it over to see dust between the rolls of tape. I blew away the dust, pulled gently at the plastic flap for a quick flash of the magnetic tape before letting my fingers press into the indents of the little black box.

“Marco,” Eren muttered, voice flat with exasperation, “No. Put it down.”

I glanced up at him, and I realized he’d figured it out before I had: there was no way I was going to leave the little thing behind. The nostalgia and curiosity were too strong.

I bit my lip and held the tape to my chest the way I had with my book earlier. “Come on, he won’t miss it,” I tried.

“Oh, my God, Marco, there are less painful ways to commit suicide!” he complained.

I frowned at him. “That’s not funny,” I muttered. I held the tape out a little to look down at it, as if it were a little animal. Some kind of protective, maternal instinct grew in my chest the longer I looked. “Look, he’ll just destroy it if I leave it here.” I shuddered as I thought about the possibilities. “Or worse, he’ll sell it on the black market, like he did to Sailor Moon. I could’ve saved her.”

I looked back up to find Eren glaring at me, his eyes the very definition of done. I figured I was acting kind of insane. Levi was perfectly capable of murdering us both—or most terrifying of all, firing me. There were some things I couldn’t bear to lose, and my crappy job was one of them.

“So?” he deadpanned finally. “Marco, that’s either his job or his business. Either way, you steal that shit, and he’ll be on our asses until they finally shut this store down.” He flailed his hand at me, turning around. “I’m leaving early. Come check me out.”

I sighed, reluctantly setting the tape down and following Eren out of the room to check him out as he’d asked. I was glad to be correct in hoping he meant the DVDs and not his muscles or something, because I wasn’t in the headspace for that particular emotional turmoil, wanting to refuse and also not wanting to hurt his feelings. I dreaded the day he asked outright, and I had to face the fear.

Eren didn’t exactly have a card, so he always used mine, which was fine by me because I never used it. As long as he paid me back for any late fees, it didn’t bother me.

“If I come in tomorrow and Levi shoots me one of those death glares,” Eren muttered, taking his card and DVDs from my hands before handing me the money, “I’m going to pass it on to you personally, got it?”

“I know,” I answered and then waved as he walked backwards towards the door.

He pointed two fingers towards his eyes and then pointed one at me, a silent warning to wrap up his verbal one. “See you tomorrow, Marco,” he called over his shoulder as he turned around to push through the glass doors.

I watched him leave, watched him turn on a heel and head towards his pretty little silver car, which looked out of place beside the shattered parking chock and my forest green and rusted truck. His dad was a doctor, lucky duck.

I waited, I swear, for at least a good three minutes after his car disappeared from my sight. I checked my watch at least once every minute, watching the time slowly tick from 11:32, to 11:33, to 11:34, until finally the blinking green of my digital watch was too much to bear.

I wondered, briefly as I scurried into Levi’s office, if there were actually any cameras in the Blockbuster, but I honestly doubted Levi even cared enough to install them. Who would care if someone stole from a Blockbuster that would probably shut down in a few months?

Who would care if someone stole from their boss’s office, especially if their boss probably had no use for it?

I felt bad about taking it for the first few minutes of the drive home, my eyes constantly flicking from the road to the little tape sitting in the passenger seat beside me.

It was probably porn. It might’ve been a home video, and the shock of my own actions mixed with the idea of a younger Levi glaring at the camera made me burst into short snaps of hysterical laughter as I navigated the roads back home.

Snowball didn’t appear again that night, and I was briefly relieved with the hope that she had found her way home and was fenced in a backyard, safe from people like me who couldn’t seem to pay attention to the road if their life depended on it. I remembered that my mom used to drive me to school, even after I’d gotten my driver’s license.

The thought made my laughter freeze in my throat, and I decidedly shoved it out to focus on driving instead. A quick check at the street signs reminded me that my house was just a turn away. I glanced quickly at the VHS, before looking through the passenger-side window as I slid onto my street.

My house—not home because there were still rooms I was afraid to actually explore—was old. And big. And creaky. And creepy, for that matter. It existed on the outskirts of town, and there were rumors that people had been brutally murdered there.

When I’d first heard the offer of the house, I didn’t care about the ghost stories, because all I could think about was getting away from home and school and not looking at people again for a long, long time. As the months passed, the longer and longer I spent in the house, I started to stop doubting the rumors.

The lawn was unkempt partly out of inability to do so and partly out of inability to want to do so. I didn’t much like flowers anymore or the smell of freshly cut grass. So it was overgrown, and the sidewalk had cracks in it, and that didn’t hold a candle to the creak and groans of the rotted wooden front steps leading up to the door.

I was sometimes shocked when I opened the door to find bright yellow living room walls and a nice, warm couch curled in front of an old TV. I was mildly stunned when I walked into the kitchen with clean dishes stacked neatly in one of the side-by-side sinks. I was pleasantly surprised by the fluffy comfort of my own bed and the easy-to-open bedroom window that let me look out at the stars.

It was creepy, and weird, and old, but over time, I’d successfully made it my own, I suppose.

I set my book and tape down on the couch before hurrying around to check that the VCR was hooked up. I’d had it since I was a kid, and it had been handed down to me along with the box of knickknacks my sentimental parents had left behind. I took good care of it, if I said so myself. It wasn’t broken, never screwed up, had no dust on it (at least, according to my sensibilities—Levi’s would have been a whole other story).

It was plugged in, and there were no tapes inside of it, mostly because I’d stopped watching the home videos a few months before. Everything was perfect, ready to go.

My heart leapt into my throat as I attempted to slide the VHS in.

Porn. Home videos. Black market fodder. Nerves pooled in the center of my stomach, forming a little ball of pain, a little knot of, “I’m a dirty, no good thief, oh, my gosh, what’s wrong with me?”

I blew the dust off again, just one more time, pressing my thumbs into the little holes in the plastic and studying the rectangular indents they left in my skin. Was it stealing if I didn’t use it? I could take it back. Levi was going to kill me when he noticed it missing. He couldn’t fire me if I was early the next day, could he?

I never understood my own curiosity. It was mostly detrimental to my health really, but it had led to a lot of good revelations over time as well. At least, enough to be more useful than dangerous. Not dangerous at all.

I took a deep, steadying breath, scolded myself for being so nervous, and slid the VHS in.

It took a moment for the VCR to read the tape, and then there was an image on the screen.

It was a room, simple like an unused hotel room and dirty with stains like an often-used motel room. There was really nothing in it, except for an unmade bed, a flickering lamp on a dented bedside table, and a strained light coming from a window somewhere off-screen. An ordinary, if slightly unsettling, room.

All except for the man standing in the middle of it, leaning the back of his knees against the bed and crossing his arms, looking for all intents and purposes like a jerk ready to roll his eyes at whatever I attempted to say.

He wore a red beanie and a tattered hoodie and uncomfortable-looking jeans, and his grimace could kill a man.

I blinked stupidly at the screen for a few minutes, thinking too fast to really make sense of anything.

_Person. What? Weird. Staring at me? Why? Rewind. Rewind. Rewind._

I didn’t look away from the person on the screen, and he didn’t look away from me. He was pale, with ash blonde hair hanging in his eyes. If I squinted, it looked like he had an undercut, but his beanie was in the way.

Slowly, carefully, I leaned forward, hand reaching towards the rewind button.

He rolled his eyes and re-crossed his arms, as if getting comfortable.

I stopped, hand halfway towards the VCR. He’d moved. He’d reacted. He was still staring at me. I tilted my head at him, and he rose one pierced eyebrow at me.

“Um…” I breathed.

My heart was pounding, and I wasn’t sure why. It was just some weird sequence in the middle of some kind of art movie, probably. I didn’t know why Levi would like something like this or watch something like this or need or want something like this, but I was going to rewind it for him and give it back to him ASAP.

He rose the other eyebrow, making an expression crossed between amused and annoyed.

My mouth felt dry as I leaned back on my heels. “Um,” I repeated, vocal pauses becoming my friends. I still couldn’t look away from him, as much as I wanted to. I rose my hand and waved nervously. “Hello?”

He scoffed and then smirked. One arm rose out of its crossed position, and he wiggled his fingers at me. “Hey.”

Should I ever have a heart attack in the future, at least I would know what it feels like.

My heart stopped and jumped and raced and sank to my stomach and rose into my throat all at once, but all I could manage was a tiny jaw drop. My lips fell open, and my breath caught, and I let out a tiny, choked, “Oh.”

Silence, at least for a moment, before I shot to my feet and gasped, “Oh!”

He looked up at me from the screen, his grimace spreading wider. “Yeah, okay.”

I shook my head, trying to form words. It was just like before. “Rewind,” I gasped. “Rewind? Oh, my gosh. What? I don’t… What?”

He rolled his eyes and plopped back onto the bed, uncrossing his arms to lean back on his hands. “Better reaction than that chick in the glasses, I guess.”

My whole body was shaking as I sank onto my couch. Too weird. He was talking to me. From the TV. From a _VHS_.

I took in a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay,” I exhaled. I took another breath and then looked at him again. “Okay.” I nodded. “Okay.”

I shot back to my feet and started pacing. “Oh, my gosh, this is really weird,” I babbled. “This is really, really weird.”

“You’re kind of wigging out,” he muttered, and I whipped around to him.

“I’m not—“ I shook my head. “No, I’m not wigging out; you’re wigging out! What is going on?” I sank back onto the couch, pressing my hands to my face. “How are you doing that? What are you doing?”

“Um, standing, duh,” he snapped back.

My head shot up, and I just stared at him for a moment, jaw open in disbelief. He was. He was indeed standing there, glaring at me. Except, of course, he was inside a TV.

If that fact wasn’t enough, he was definitely pulling a Levi face, eyes narrowed and lip drawn up in one corner in disdain. That wasn’t helping me calm down at all.

 _Stop trying to make sense of it_ , I told myself. _You’re giving yourself a headache._

I swallowed hard, letting my face drop back into my hands. Stop thinking, that was a good idea. Just… Just go with it, Marco.

I took a deep breath and then looked up at him again. “Um…” I held my breath, struggling to meet his eyes and giving up when it became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to. “M-my name’s Marco?”

I managed a glance over at him, caught the sight of him crossing his arms and smirking at me. “You sure about that?” he teased.

I felt a strained laugh pop out of my throat and choked it back before it started sounding maniacal. “No, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“Okay.”

And that was that.

I still couldn’t look at him, instead staring at the floor between us and taking deep, measured breaths. He didn’t say anything either, and it wasn’t until he let out a frustrated groan that it finally occurred to me: I was failing at having a conversation with a person in a TV. I was having the most surreal experience of my life.

I was beginning to wonder why I’d ever taken the VHS in the first place. I just wanted to go to sleep and forget the day. It was too late to deal with people in TVs, and I was too tired to deal with freaky VHS tapes—and my curiosity didn’t care.

“So…” I began. I tapered off and wondered what I was supposed to even ask. What was I supposed to ask a person in a TV?

I glanced up at him. He wasn’t looking at me, instead staring out at a light source coming from off screen. He looked just like any other person, maybe a little more attractive, but still… humanoid.

I told myself to suck it up and just act as if he were just some other person. _Pretend you’re at a party, Marco. You used to be pretty good at those._

“Then, what’s your name?” I prompted.

He let out an exaggerated sigh, as if it was some huge hassle to introduce himself. “Jean,” he muttered, turning his face towards me again. He squinted but at nothing in particular. His gaze zoned out at a space somewhere above my shoulder. “Cerise-Pierre.”

I nodded, closing my eyes in an attempt to block out the actual situation and replace it with loud music and claustrophobic dancing. “Jean Cerise-Pierre,” I repeated, focusing on the flow of his voice and the syllables instead of him. “French?” I asked.

“Yeah.” I could hear a smile in his voice. “And you didn’t screw up the pronunciation. Props to you.”

I felt myself begin to smile back. “One point to Gryffindor,” I murmured.

He went silent for a moment. I opened my eyes to look at him, killing the brief vision. A twinge of nerves flooded my hands at the sight of his blank, confused expression. “What?” he deadpanned.

I blinked at him, smoothing my palms along my pants to get rid of the sweat pooling in them. “Point to Gryffindor?” I repeated. I tried to smile again. “You know, Harry Potter?”

His face looked even more confused and, worse, more annoyed. I decided to change the subject, and my mind couldn’t stray far from what was happening when I was staring straight at it.

“Um, so…” I looked away and bit down hard on my lip. Eren had told me once it was a nasty nervous habit. “How are you…” I shrugged, trying for nonchalant. The way my shoulders drew up and my head sank between them probably killed the attempt. “You know, talking to me?”

He groaned. “What is up with that question?” he grunted, flopping back onto the bed. “With my fucking mouth, what’s it look like, dumbass?”

I shrank back further into my couch and drew my legs up to shield me. I struggled not to start hyperventilating into my khakis. _You’re the one who stole this thing, you’re the one who’s going to have to deal with it_.

“I didn’t mean to—I just—I only asked once,” I stammered. Nailed it.

He merely scoffed in response to my well-worded stutter. “Oh, and you’re definitely the first,” he muttered, voice dry with sarcasm.

I wanted to feel offended, but his words dug into my head. First? Well that cut the whole hallucination possibility. Great.

“Okay,” I breathed. I lifted a hand to scratch at my neck, trying to breathe a little deeper, to get just a bit more breath into my lungs. “Yeah. _Yeah_.” I let my legs slide back down to the floor, slowly, nervously. Not hallucinating at least probably meant I wasn’t absolutely crazy. Yet.

“The fuck is up with you?” he muttered.

My gaze snapped up at him to see him holding himself up on his elbows to cock an eyebrow at me. I felt a nervous smile twitch onto my lips. “Just… going crazy, is all,” I answered.

He laughed, but it was sharp like a bark. “Yeah, whatever.”

He silently glared at me for a bit. I wondered how he wasn’t freaking out, not even a little. Was he used to it? How on earth did he get used to it?

How did it work from his side anyway? Was he looking at a little TV with a weird VHS too? Maybe this was some kind of portal. Maybe he’d put a mysterious VHS in his VCR at the same time as I had, and it had opened some wormhole into each other’s lives.

Maybe I really was losing it. I wondered why it had taken so long. Almost a year, and just when I was starting to contemplate integrating back into society.

I nodded to myself. “Nope,” I breathed. I shook my head. “Nope, this is too much.” I stood up and walked over to the TV, sinking down in front of it, ready to flick it off.

Jean just sighed, his face taking on some kind dejected expression. “Bye, I guess,” he murmured.

I paused with my fingers against the off button on my VCR. I bit my lip before pressing down.

Hallucination, or dream, or wormhole, or whatever, he looked genuinely disappointed.

I couldn’t recall having ever seen someone look so disappointed when someone they’d just met didn’t want to talk to them. It was… almost endearing.

Before I could stop myself, I was whispering, “Um… tomorrow?”

His eyes flicked back up to meet mine. “What about it?” he asked, voice heavy with suspicion.

I leaned back and tried to smile at him. “Tomorrow. We can… We can, like, talk more tomorrow, you know. I’ll… turn you on again?”

He snorted at that, and I felt my face flush red. “That’s not what I meant!” I stuttered, ducking my head.

He just laughed harder, and I felt myself beginning to chuckle along with him. When I looked back up, we both had genuine smiles on our faces.

It felt natural. As surreal and confusing as this was, it felt natural to smile at dirty puns with TV guy. It felt nice. The thought only made me smile wider.

“I meant I’ll turn the TV on—“

“That doesn’t sound any better,” he told me, words sliding through a grin.

I rolled my eyes at him, smiling good-naturedly. “The power will go back on tomorrow night,” I amended, “And we will continue our conversation then.”

He shrugged, looking away again. “Yeah, whatever,” he sighed. “Tomorrow, fine.”

“Um… Well…” I took a deep breath, my hand faltering on the power button. “Goodnight,” I murmured.

I decidedly clicked the VCR off before he could reply, but the quick glance I shot up to his face before clicking it told me he wasn’t actually going to say anything anyway.

I thought about it all the way upstairs to my room. My bed was fluffy and warm and slightly expensive, but I twisted around under my covers that night, flopping back and forth and trying to stop thinking at the same time as I was trying to think.

I ended up staring at the ceiling until two AM, finding designs in the cracked wood and thinking about the boy in the video. I was going to talk to him again the next day. What was I going to say?

What are you? Why are you in a video? Are you the same age as me? Do you have an undercut? Are you gay, by any chance?

I grabbed my pillow and shoved it over my face. _In the name of all that is good in the world, Marco, shut_ up _. Video guy is in a_ TV _. No one cares._

My mind went silent for a little while after that escapade.

But then it perked up around another thought.

How? How was a good question. How are you in a video? How are you talking through a VHS tape?

How did you end up in _my_ VCR?


	2. Roll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marco tries to figure Jean out.

I stared at the TV as I buttoned and unbuttoned the top button of my uniform polo. Guilt rattled in my head, telling me over and over again to march over there, take out the VHS, and sneak it back into Levi’s office somehow. And, had it been any ordinary video, I would’ve, I really would’ve.

But it wasn’t.

Overnight, the dreamless sleep I’d fallen into had blurred the memory of the surreal conversation I’d had with the man in the video, but little brushes of memory still swept over me every few minutes, piquing my interest and leaving my head spinning with questions.

Jean, he’d called himself. Jean Cerise-Pierre. I wished I owned a laptop or something so I could look the name up, because Cerise-Pierre, when I thought about it, was kind of a weird last name. Wasn’t Pierre a first name?

I shook my head of the idea and glanced through the window beside the front door. Each side of the door had a long, thin window beside it. Sometimes I looked at the people that passed my house through them and tried to guess where they were going or what they were doing. But people rarely passed by.

I turned my head back to the TV and huffed, scratching nervously under my nose before making up my mind to cross the room.

I knelt before the TV and, for a moment, wondered if I really was losing my mind. Maybe Jean was real, and I hadn’t made him up or something. But if he was real, alive, some mysterious being that lived in VHS tapes, then how crazy did I have to be to want to see him _again_?

Then again… If I sought him out, then I had the upper hand, didn’t I? If he were dangerous, he would have hurt me by then. And it wasn’t as if he were the one stalking me, or something; I was the one who wanted to see him again.

And I did. I wanted to see him again. After the initial wave of shock and fear had melted out of me those sleepless hours the night before, I’d realized that I wanted to know everything I could about him.

I clicked on the TV and then the VCR.

He was still there. When the TV flickered to life, he was leaning against the edge of the screen, looking off-screen out of the window that I’d already assumed was there.

He didn’t seem to notice me for a moment, or if he did, he didn’t acknowledge. Whatever time it was in his corner of the world, the light coming in through the window was a pale blue that left strange, sharp shadows across his face. The piercing in his eyebrow glinted in the shine.

“Um…” I murmured.

He glanced over at me and, after recognizing me, rolled his eyes. “Well, hello again.” He scrunched his nose up at me and smirked. He didn’t seem as annoyed as he had been the night before. “Miss me?”

I settled down on the couch, pulling my legs up to my chest and resting my chin on my khaki-clad knees. I remembered my advice from the night before: just go with it. “More like I’m making sure I’m not, you know, crazy or something,” I told him, noticing how much easier it was to speak when I told myself to be calm.

He cocked an eyebrow at me, questioning.

I scratched a hand through my hair and glanced away. “You know, making sure you’re… still… _here_.”

I wanted to say still real. But I had a feeling that would offend him.

He chuckled, pushing away from the window to move a little closer towards me. His form became bigger the closer he got, until his face took up more of the screen, as if he were looking into a camera. I found myself leaning warily back, but he remained inside the TV, a safe distance away. He didn’t seem to notice my distress either, just tilted his head and raised his eyebrows at me. “What? Thought I ditched you?”

I smiled, despite myself. The way he spoke—casual, teasing—helped to put me at ease. I wasn’t sure if he just didn’t care about how weird it all was or if he was used to it for some reason. But his demeanor changed the strangeness. Surreal was beginning to melt away into easy.

For a brief moment, I thought about asking him the questions that had been stewing in my mind all night, but I was on a time limit, so I knew I wouldn’t have a chance. I just smiled at him instead. “Nah, you seem nicer than that,” I assured him.

He snorted, shaking his head and backing away from the camera. “As if,” he muttered before planting himself on the bed. “So, I was wondering, what’s up with the outfit? You look stiff.”

I groaned, stretching my legs out in front of me, and the sound dissolved into a laugh. “Oh, my gosh, I know, right? It’s my uniform—“

“Blockbuster!” he gasped, sitting up straight. His eyes lit up. “That’s the Blockbuster uniform. You’re shitting me. You work at Blockbuster?”

I blinked confusedly at him. Yeah, no, he was way too excited to hear I worked at Blockbuster. No one got excited about Blockbuster. “Uh, yeah.”

“Dude, you must have some mad skills,” he praised, looking me up and down. He shot his gaze up to my eyes. “I couldn’t get a job there if my life depended on it.”

If he couldn’t get a job at Blockbuster, I seriously questioned his ability to hold down a job. There was no way I was going to say that, though.

I just smiled and nodded along with him. “Well, my boss is pretty tough,” I admitted. I spared a glance at my watch and took a sharp breath. “Speaking of which, I really have to go.” I slid off the couch and crouched in front of the TV, reaching for the off button. “I want to get in early today.”

“Oh. Yeah, whatever.” His voice took on that dejected tone from the night before. I glanced up at the sound of it, and our eyes met for a brief moment before he snapped his gaze away.

I felt a tiny smile slide over my lips, and I leaned back. “We’ll talk more tonight.” He peeked a glance at me. “Okay?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, _whatever_.”

“I’ll see you then,” I told him, and his lips twitched but didn’t smile before I flicked the TV off.

 

I shifted uncomfortably around the bench outside the Blockbuster, waiting for Levi and Eren to arrive. It was early, and the sun was still lazily making its way up the sky, but it was already too hot. I’d attempted to roll my khaki pants up, but capris looked awkward on me. I’d quickly given up that attempt.

I drummed my fingers against the bench, staring at whatever caught my attention. There was a nervous fear filling my stomach, reminding me in waves of the guilt I should’ve expected before I stole the VHS.

I looked at my rusting truck and wondered when I should get new tires, because mine were getting low. I glanced at the weeds growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk and hoped Levi wouldn’t notice them so I didn’t have to sit there for hours picking them out. I gazed out at the road and the distinct lack cars passing by until a sleek silver one and a tiny blue one pulled into the parking lot.

Eren popped out of his car first, grimacing at the heat outside of his air-conditioned baby, but the moment Levi stepped out of his car, we both straightened our backs and evened out our expressions.

He squinted at me as he walked past and to the door. “Someone’s early,” he noted, pulling out the key.

I scurried after him, careful not to look at Eren as he came up beside me. “Good morning, Levi,” I stammered.

He glared at me over his shoulder, cocking a questioning eyebrow at me for a moment before shrugging and looking back at the door. “Morning,” he replied.

The acknowledgement did nothing to quell the nerves in my stomach. But it was more than I usually got.

Levi struggled with the door for a minute, twisting the key and getting absolutely nowhere with it. Eren rolled his eyes, arms crossed grumpily across his chest. He never did well in the mornings—always too tired. That day, I could relate.

He leaned towards me, eyes focused on the key twisting uselessly in the lock, and muttered, “Maybe if he gave us a key, we’d be inside already.”

Levi barely moved as he snapped out his reply. “Maybe if you shitheads kept an alarm clock and actually got in on time every day, I’d trust you to open the fucking store.”

Eren made a choking sound, and Levi shoved open the door.

I grimaced at Eren as he winced up at me. _Great,_ I thought. _Put him in a worse mood than usual, Eren. Helpful. I’m trying_ not _to get arrested here_.

He didn’t hear my internal grumping. “Today’s going to be a great day,” he muttered to himself, trudging into the store.

I watched after him, catching the sight of the office door snapping shut, and unlike the day before, I was very _seriously_ contemplating running away. I bit down hard on my lip and tugged at the chapped skin, eyes flicking between the front desk and my truck a little behind and to the side of me.

I reasoned it out in numbers. I was five feet from my car and twenty feet from the desk—it was a much shorter distance. A VHS was probably worth ten bucks, at the most, and a human life was worth, like… at least a few thousand—a VHS clearly wasn’t worth murder, so maybe I was safe? I stood there for another two minutes, and it took Eren exactly one confused stare to get me moving towards him.

I had just tasted the blood on my lip when Eren saw it and asked, “Jesus Christ, what’s eating you?” He grinned before I could reply. “I mean, other than yourself.”

I carefully removed bloody teeth from my lip and brushed my fingers over the peeled scab. “Great,” I mumbled in response.

Eren laughed, leaning onto the desk. “Man, you look like you got punched in the mouth or something,” he teased.

I stuck my tongue out at him and managed a smile, but the thought of me with a split lip only led to the thought of Levi giving me one.

I didn’t say anything in reply, keeping the nightmare image tucked away in the back of my mind as I slipped around the desk to take my seat next to Eren. The chair was softer than it had ever seemed before, and I sank down into it, making myself as small as possible. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the back of the chair, wondering how long it would take Levi to realize the VHS was missing and how long I’d have left to figure out how to tell Eren my goodbyes. Maybe he could pass one or two along to his family and Armin and Annie.

“I hope you have another one of those,” Eren muttered suddenly.

I snapped my head around to him, eyes wide. Another one of what? Another conscience? He’d bailed the night before, and his replacement was a little overbearing.

Eren gestured with a flick of his hand towards my lap, and my cheeks flushed red in confusion before I looked down to see the bag I usually put my lunch in shredded around my apple and sandwich. I blinked at it for maybe a second before I tossed it onto the counter as if it were poisonous. We stared at it for a moment, and with a resigned sigh, I counted the seconds before Eren realized what was going on.

Levi would tell you Eren had beef for brains, and Mikasa would tell you he was unwise. Armin would tell you of all the times he mispronounced the name of their hometown, Shiganshina. I will tell you that Eren had always wanted to be a cop, just like I had once upon a time, and I had never met anyone who could spy guilt a mile away like Eren could.

His jaw dropped in shock, and his green eyes widened at least a yard wide. I winced under the Judgment Day looming behind his shocked stare, but he didn’t say anything. He just sat there for a moment, staring at me, and then his mouth snapped shut, and he whipped around to glare at the door.

“Eren?” I whimpered.

He snapped his eyes to me, narrow and livid, and I shrank away from them. He didn’t say a word.

I remained cowering in my chair for what seemed like forever, but he kept his mouth shut. The guilt I’d been so focused on was quickly outshined by genuine regret.

Instead of attempting any more conversation with Eren, I trained my eyes on the view through the glass doors before us. We wouldn’t have any customers that day, which was pretty okay by me, since I was kind of too stressed to talk to people.

I traced the paths of the odd car for as far as I could follow them, wondering how much time was passing and where anyone was going.

The heat got more and more unbearable, but even Eren, too wrapped up in his cold shoulder reaction, wasn’t complaining.

After a while, I glanced down at my watch, at the 11:30 flicking out at me, and frowned, knowing I had at least four more hours and wasn’t looking forward to any of it.

Well, I was looking forward to the end of it. A shower, and food, and _Jean_.

The thought of talking to him again made me bite my lip, and I wasn’t sure if I was hiding nerves or a smile. In an attempt to mask it from Eren, I rose to my feet and headed for one of the racks.

Try as I may, I couldn’t bring myself to regret taking the VHS for long. Guilt at breaking a law—and, worse, a promise—didn’t last as long as it should have when I remembered the strange person inside the video. I’d been scared before, but the more I thought about it, the more curious I was.

Jean Cerise-Pierre. I still didn’t quite trust the name (he certainly didn’t look _that_ French), but it sounded mysterious enough. Did it have a meaning? I bet it was something cool, but my lack of experience with the French language had me at a loss as to what it could mean.

I traced fingers along romantic comedies, discreetly looking at the tips of them to make sure I’d gotten enough dust off the night before. Leading actresses gave me quirky stares as I eyed their love interests and compared the boy in the video to them. He had a more angular jaw, lighter hair. Nicer eyes…

Where had he come from? Where was he? Why was he there? How old was he?

I picked a DVD out and flipped it over to read the back, although I’d already watched it before. Pretty such-and-so is overworked and stressed and struggling to find love. When she meets hot-guy, she hates him right away. But that hate quickly falls away to true love—and I actually loved romantic comedies. But even I got jealous every now and then.

A nagging voice inside me told me I shouldn’t be jealous, because it wasn’t as if no one was interested in me. I glanced at Eren through the spaces in between racks. Any normal person would’ve told me to go out with him. He liked me, and he was nice enough and looked good. But I’d tried making myself like him, and I just couldn’t. Not that way.

I flicked the DVD back into place on the rack and moved on.

I wondered what kind of movie the VHS had once been. A horror? A comedy? I couldn’t imagine Jean having been stuck in it ever since it had been created, if stuck in it was the right way to describe it. Maybe he was a part of it. Maybe he was the VHS’s _soul_.

I huffed out a disbelieving laugh at the thought, but the breathless giggle was cut off by the sound of Levi’s office door swinging open. I stiffened, afraid to turn and look, but when I did dare a glance, he was just marching into the bathroom, hiding away without a word.

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. I glanced down at my watch and realized we’d been there for a while, and he still hadn’t said anything. How could he have not noticed?

I bit my lip hard and hissed when I accidentally ripped open the tiny split in it. I sucked gently on the cut as I looked over at Eren, who looked just as confused as I felt.

Maybe the door had been open on purpose. Maybe he’d been sick of the VHS, unwilling to get rid of it, and was hoping one of us would steal it.

No, that didn’t sound right. He would’ve just broken it, like store policy demanded. Had demanded, at least, years ago. I wasn’t sure if it was still in effect, considering how long ago it had been instated.

Levi stepped out of the bathroom a few moments later and glanced at me. My heart froze in my chest. I understood how deer felt in headlights.

He just looked me up and down with that same horror movie glare as usual. His face seemed to… well, I couldn’t describe it as soften, because it was still rock hard, but it became less rock-like. He turned away before stating, “Summer uniforms tomorrow. You two sweat like pigs.”

I smiled a little. The only difference between the usual uniform and the one for summer was that we wore khaki shorts instead of long pants, but it was definitely a relief.

I realized he still hadn’t said anything about the VHS. I decided, after a long deliberation, that he wasn’t going to. I told myself that repeatedly, trying to convince myself that I was safe from his wrath. My _job_ was safe from his wrath.

When I let my mind turn towards learning more about Jean, the fear was easily erased from my head, replaced with a blooming, giddy anticipation. The last few hours of my shift didn’t seem so long after that.

 

I pushed open the creaky front door of my house, smiling dazedly at the thought of a shower that would be all warm water and soap bubbles, of pasta covered in sauce and cheese, of anything that wasn’t about work. It wasn’t a new daydream, but it comforted me nonetheless.

I didn’t notice the VHS on the floor behind the door until I was almost tripping over it. I stumbled, stepping wide over the tape and almost flopping on my face. I stared down at it, eyes wide in shock.

Beat up and old, ink black and missing a tag for a title, just sitting on the floor. Like a dog waiting at the door for its owner to come home. But at least ten times creepier.

I leaned over to shut the door behind me, keeping my eyes trained on the video. I half expected it to lurch towards me, as if possessed.

Carefully, nervously, fingers shaking, I crouched down and lifted the VHS off the floor.

It lay still in my hands, unmoving, and I felt myself laugh but didn’t quite hear it. That was weird. Really weird. What was it doing on the floor? I’d talked to Jean that morning, had left the video in the VCR, hadn’t taken it out or anything.

I curled it protectively to my chest as I locked the door, and then I set it on the arm of the couch as I stepped around it towards the kitchen. “Okay, no shower then,” I murmured to myself, squinting at it. “But I’m making dinner first this time.”

I walked backwards into the kitchen, keeping the video in my sights. The possibility of a burglar crossed my mind—maybe someone had come into my house while I was at work and robbed me blind, and they’d left the video on the floor as they’d fled. Or worse, maybe they were still inside with me, and they’d dropped the video in an attempt to hide before they were seen.

It was laughable, though. If they were looking for money, they weren’t going to find it there. Even my TV wasn’t worth stealing. It fuzzed out if I used it for too long.

I turned to face the oven once the wall blocked my view of my living room. Pasta. That was all I needed, pasta.

Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, I set about collecting pots and boiling water and pouring out sauce. I wasn’t much of a cook, but pasta was easy. Well, easier than most things, I’d come to learn. I’d only spent one year in college, but the lessons I had learned would last me a long time.

I poured some spaghetti into the pot, lifting a spatula to stir it as it started to foam. I wondered, not for the first time, if it was supposed to foam up or if I was just a particularly bad cook.

Seeing everything was in order, I scratched the back of my neck and turned to the dirty dishes in the sink…

And the VHS on the counter.

“Holy sh— nap!” I gasped, jumping back and smacking against the counter behind me. For a moment, all I could do was stare, slack-jawed, until my mind began to race.

How did it get there? My heart started to pound. _There’s a stalker in my house, I’m going to die, I never finished college, my parents won’t talk to me in heaven—oh, wait, no, I stole that VHS, there’s no way I’m getting into heaven—_

I struggled for breath, staring at the VHS. It felt like it was just watching me. I mean, I knew it didn’t have eyes, and I knew it was just a VHS, and I knew that I was being ridiculous… but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn’t feel like there was someone hidden in there with me. I felt like I was staring right at the someone in there with me.

Shaking my head, I leaned around the doorway to look at my couch. The VHS wasn’t on the arm anymore. I leaned back to look at the VHS on the counter. It was just… sitting there.

I cleared my throat and nodded. “Okay, look,” I breathed. “I’m finishing up my pasta.”

I swallowed and then flicked my hand over to grasp the spatula and pull it close to my chest. I felt crazy. Why was I _talking_ to it? But nevertheless, I continued, pointing the spatula at the VHS as if I were holding a sword and not a hunk of plastic. “And when it’s done cooking… then we’ll talk.”

I paused for a moment, as if waiting for a response, before whipping back to the stove and stirred the pasta.

I kept an eye on the VHS out of the corner of my eye, but it seemed to have decided to behave. It sat on my counter, and I imagined that if it were human, if it were Jean, he’d be swinging his legs and grinning ear-to-ear. Smug.

It was strange how some things could just give off an aura.

It stayed its place though, innocently still, as I strained the pasta and dumped it in the sauce and scooped it into a bowl. It didn’t go flying out of my hands when I picked it up and tucked it under my arm, like some part of me deep down was expecting it to. That was a relief, at least.

There definitely wasn’t a VHS in the VCR when I checked it. Jean’s video was still sitting behind me on the couch next to my bowl of pasta, and I couldn’t fathom how it had gone jumping around everywhere.

The wormhole theory was steadily gaining points.

I took a deep breath before shoving the video in and clicking everything on. Jean was there waiting.

He was tossing his beanie in the air as he lay on the bed with his head hanging over the foot of it. The second the screen shivered to life, his eyes widened at me. He sat up and shoved his beanie on before turning and shooting me a suspicious squint. “So you’ve returned.”

I leaned back into the couch, pulling my bowl into my lap and smiling to myself. He did have an undercut, light on top and dark on the bottom. “Yeah, of course. I promised.”

I tried a smile, and he shrugged, looking away. “Yeah, whatever.”

I bit my lip, worrying the skin between my teeth as I wondered why he’d been more talkative that morning and now wasn’t saying anything. The sharp sting of the scab reminded me of all the questions I’d been contemplating before, and the sudden longing to know everything about him swelled up in my chest again.

I leaned forward. “Um, so, can I… ask you questions?”

He squinted at me again and, at length, rolled his eyes and leaned back. “Whatever.” He paused, mouth still open as if to say something, and just as I was contemplating what to ask first, he muttered, “I’m asking questions too.”

I blinked at him. Asking me questions? What on earth would he want to know about me? I was too boring to bother asking questions about. I had a feeling that he might be genuinely interested, but that interest would definitely fade out once he realized how lame I was.

I didn’t say any of that to him though. Let him figure out how plain my life was.

“Okay,” I answered. “We can switch around.”

He shrugged and leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked so attentive all of a sudden, as if my questions were of utmost importance. I swirled my fork around in my spaghetti and asked the first thing that came to mind. “Do you know Levi?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Who?”

I squinted at the space above the TV, wondering how to describe the man. “Short,” I supplied. “And absolutely terrifying. Kind of a clean freak? Black hair.”

Jean just shook his head. “Nope,” he muttered. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Did that mean Levi hadn’t watched the video? A whole line of questioning went down the drain.

“My turn,” he began, directing my attention back to him. He wiggled his fingers and then laced them together. Some were crooked, I noticed, as if they’d been broken once and never set right. “How old are you?”

I smiled. “Nineteen. You?”

He smirked. “That counts as a question. Eighteen.” He hummed, flexing his fingers out again and pressing his fingertips together. “Who’s your favorite band?”

I blinked at him. Band. Unexpected. I leaned back and shrugged. “Um… I don’t know a lot of new music…” I laughed, feeling the nerves in my stomach begin to build, but they were unrelated to his being in a TV. “I guess… I kind of like Bastille? My friend Eren got me one of their CDs once, and it was pretty good.”

I glanced back up at him to gauge his reaction. He didn’t seem like the type to like Bastille. I bet he didn’t even know who they were. His expression confirmed my suspicions, a kind of disappointed frown. “Never heard of them,” he muttered.

“That’s okay,” I assured. “I don’t think you’d like them… Anyway…” I pressed a hand to my chest. “My turn. Um…” Questions fluttered about my head. I hadn’t realized how many I had until I’d gotten around to asking them. “Where are you from?”

His lips twitched into a grimace. “Nunya.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I’ve… never heard of that place.”

He smirked. “Really? Haven’t heard of Nunya? Nunya Business?”

My face fell into a straight glare. Mature. Very mature. “You could at least _try_ to give me a straight answer,” I mumbled.

He rolled his eyes. “I’ve reserved the right to ignore your questions should I see fit,” he told me. “I’ll give you a do-over, since you didn’t know.”

I sighed. “Fine.” I eyed him, wondering what I could ask that he wouldn’t avoid. “Then… Where are you?”

He glanced off-screen, in the opposite direction of the window. I wondered what was on the other side of the room. A door? “Hell if I know,” he muttered. “Old motel, I guess.” He didn’t give me a chance to question further, despite the curiosity piquing at the edge of my thoughts. “Do you like dogs?”

Dogs. Dogs? I stared down into my bowl. This was not at all how I’d expected the conversation to go.

“Uh, yeah, I like dogs.” I remembered Snowball from the day before, but somehow I didn’t think he’d appreciate a long-winded anecdote. “I like cats too; they’re calm.”

He pretended to gag before laughing at me. “Nah, cats are evil. I’m pretty sure they’re plotting our immediate demise.”

I snorted. “Oh, yeah, definitely,” I allowed, finding myself snuggling deeper into the couch, carefully balancing my bowl in my lap. “We’ll have to respond with some kind of water balloon army. They’d hate that.”

He laughed again, a real one, and suddenly, I didn’t mind the detour his questioning had taken us down. I laughed along with him before sitting up a bit and clearing my throat. “Okay, my turn again. What… Um, I mean, if you don’t mind me asking… what are you?”

His smile twitched into a more confused expression. “Male?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “No, that’s—that’s not what I meant—“

He smirked. “Guess you wasted your question, then,” he tutted, before continuing with his own question. “What’s your favorite movie?”

I sighed, exasperated, and set my bowl down beside me. “27 Dresses,” I replied, not even thinking about it. Maybe not my favorite, but it was good enough. I ran my fingers through my hair, wondering how to word my question so he knew what I meant. “Um… Are you human?”

He scowled. “Are you kidding me? Dude, what do I look like?” he snapped, face scrunching up in a wave of anger. “A fucking horse?”

My eyes widened. “What, no, that’s not what I meant at all!”

But my attempts at calming him down fell on deaf ears. His hands curled into fists in the bed sheets. “Jesus Christ, people call me rude? What the hell is your problem anyway?”

He shot to his feet, pointing at me, eyes narrowed with disgust, and I felt the urge to melt into my couch just to get away from that glare. “Maybe I don’t have a fancy job like you, asshole, but at least I have some fucking manners!”

I set my bowl beside me before curling my knees to my chest and hiding behind them. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to offend you—“

“Then maybe ask some normal questions for once!” He pulled his hand back, leaving it twitching by his side before he let it scrunch into a fist. He crossed his arms. “Am I _human_? Like, what the hell, are you _not_?”

I groaned, pressing my hands to my face. I’d figured he was the touchy type, but I hadn’t been expecting him to start screaming at me like that. I wanted to disappear. What had I said that was so wrong? “This is _not_ how I imagined this conversation going…” I mumbled into my palms.

“Yeah, well, you don’t even know me,” he muttered. “What’d you think was going to happen, asking weirdo questions like that?”

I spread my fingers to look at him. He’d plopped back down onto the bed, and he looked significantly calmer than before. He’d crossed his legs underneath him and hunched forward onto them, arms crossed. His eyes still looked hurt. Insulted.

I looked away again. He was right. I’d told myself to treat him like a person, and instead I was treating him like a novelty. His questions weren’t so weird as I’d thought. He was trying to get to know me. I was just trying to figure him out. The thought made my stomach twist.

“Okay,” I whispered. I shook my head. “No, you’re right.” I let my legs slide down a little further so I could look over my knees at him. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, glancing towards the left of the screen for a moment before leaning back a bit. “Yeah, whatever.” He twisted his jaw around, as if testing words in his mouth. “What’s Eren like?”

I blinked at him. I hadn’t expected him to say anything beyond a request to leave him alone. “Huh?”

“Eren,” he repeated, turning his gaze to me. “You mentioned your friend bought you a CD?” He shrugged. “What’s he like?”

I let my lips twitch into a tiny smile, settling into the idea of getting to know Jean, not the man in the TV. “Um… well, he’s nice,” I began, letting the words out on a breath. “If you’re on his good side, I mean. He can be really stubborn, and sometimes, he doesn’t really think before he says something? But he’s… reliable.”

He cupped his chin in one hand, tapping his fingers along his lower lip as he nodded. “Boring,” he muttered. I opened my mouth to protest, but he interrupted before I could. “Your turn.” He glared at me, suspicious, challenging. “Don’t waste it.”

I stopped to think about it for a moment. Don’t waste it. I could’ve asked him more. Asked him about the video, about the TV, about all of it. But I knew he wouldn’t like it, and if I was being honest… I didn’t care as much. Yeah, I wanted to know about the VHS, and how he’d gotten into it, and why Levi had him, but I had a sneaking suspicion that maybe… maybe he didn’t even know.

And why should I care? I wasn’t talking to a VHS. I was talking to Jean. A person. In a video, yeah, but a person. A person I wanted to know more about.

“Why do you…” I bit my lip and smiled a little around my teeth, wondering how he would take the question. “Why do you hate cats?”

He gasped, sounding almost shocked, and my smile widened when I glanced up to see him grinning. “How do you not hate cats!” he shouted. “I was once mauled by a cat, I’ll have you know.”

I snorted, and hesitantly folded my legs beneath me, getting comfortable because I had a feeling I was in for a bumpy ride. He ranted on and on about cats, and I just listened to his horror stories.

After a while, he started to ask questions again. I smiled along, supplied my answers, let him ask me too many questions at a time, although he never let me ask something out of turn.

He liked older bands, I learned, like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, and he couldn’t stand the Backstreet Boys.

I told him about the millions of books I’d read, although he still vehemently denied the existence of Harry Potter, and I couldn’t figure that out for the life of me.

He liked any kind of food with cheese in it, and he faked gagging when I told him I liked anything with sugar in it. He told me I would die of a sugar rush. He seemed personally offended when I told him cheese would kill him slowly, and I’d at least go out with a bang.

It was… nice. He didn’t seem to hold my earlier questions against me, and for that, I was grateful. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to make a new friend, and I found myself jumping at the chance. It’d been too long a time.

Forgotten beside me, the pasta ended up going cold, untouched. Even though I’d been hungry before—and tired and achy and dreaming of a shower—after we’d said our goodnights and promised to talk more the next day, I couldn’t bring myself to care that I hadn’t eaten a bite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you like how it's going. =D  
> If you would like to track updates for this fic on tumblr or ask me questions or something, then my writing side blog on tumblr is novelistangel.tumblr.com.  
> If you'd like to follow my beta-reader (and please do, because he's awesome and really nice and helpful!), you can do that at fantummwithanf.tumblr.com.  
> Please leave a comment if you liked it. Thanks again for reading!


	3. Old Tapes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some things make sense and others seem like they never will.

I woke up before my alarm rang, and the moment I was awake, my thoughts were on Jean.

It was honestly kind of pathetic how much I was thinking about him. I stayed in bed, wondering about every little thing I hadn’t gotten around to asking him the night before. Was he scared of anything? What were his parents like? What job did he have? Did he go to school? What was his major if he did?

The alarm rang before I got out of bed, and as I let it ring, I wondered again about the questions I’d been so eager to get out of the way before. What was he? How’d he get inside a VHS?

_Maybe I was going about it all wrong_ , I thought as I stumbled out of bed and to the closet, searching for my khaki shorts. _Maybe I should tell him what_ I _know first._

Of course, what _did_ I know?

I found my shorts stuffed in the back of the closet, on a square pile of things I’d never bothered really unpacking. Pulling at the shorts caused the pile to go sprawling to the floor, and a box tumbled over the mess to roll to a stop in front of me. It wasn’t my parents’ box; that was sitting on my bedside table, because as much as I didn’t really want to look at it, I was too sentimental to hide it.

Curious, I set my pants down by my side and tugged the box towards me to open it up. I sighed at the contents. Old, beat up Converse. A bunch of pens and pencils. A few slightly used notepads. I definitely was too sentimental. They were leftovers from my time in college, the only things I’d really kept because they were the most useful.

I lifted one green Converse, scratching at the scuffs and remembering all the laps I’d jogged in them, keeping in shape for class. I’d always wanted to be a cop, someone who could help people, serve people. It was a dream that had almost come true.

But I didn’t want to think about that any longer than I had to.

I hurried into the rest of my clothes, stuffing a notepad and pencil into my back pocket. I paused for a moment and then, after a steadying breath, decidedly pulled the old Converse on. They still fit, albeit a little snugly. It felt nice to wear them again, if I didn’t think about what I’d once used them for.

I jogged downstairs, savoring the sound of my shoelaces slapping the steps, and paused before the front door, glancing at my watch and then the TV. I had a few minutes to spare. It was just a hello. Just a good morning.

Who was I kidding, trying to give myself a good excuse? I would’ve turned on the TV to see him even if I were an hour late.

I flicked it on and settled onto the couch, grinning when he appeared on screen. He was fiddling with the piercing in his eyebrow, glaring off to the left of the screen. “Morning,” I offered.

He snapped his eyes over to me, blinking in confusion and then letting his lips spread into a smile as he dropped his hand. “Morning,” he replied. He looked me up and down and narrowed his eyes. “Why the _hell_ are you wearing shorts?”

I cocked an eyebrow at him, smoothing my palms over said shorts. “Well, it _is_ kind of the middle of summer,” I laughed. “My boss said summer uniforms starting today. Even he doesn’t want us to melt, you know?”

He looked beyond confused, his expression one of vague horror. “Where do you _live_?” he gasped. “It’s literally the coldest October on earth right now.”

I stared at him for a moment before furrowing my brows at him. “It’s… It’s really… not,” I murmured.

He glared at me, expression incredulous. “You just keep getting weirder and weirder,” he muttered.

I was almost taken aback, but I was careful not to let it show on my face. _I_ was getting weirder and weirder? He was one to talk.

I wanted to argue further, figure out how he’d gotten it into his head that it was _October_ , of all things, but I knew I didn’t have time. It served me right for spending my extra minutes lazing around in bed instead of getting ready for work.

I ran my hand through my bangs and sighed. “Well… we can argue timelines tonight, I guess,” I told him, rising to my feet. “I have to get to work now.”

He grunted. “You know, you seriously wig me out, dude,” he muttered.

I shrugged, shuffling over to turn off the TV. Before I reached the button, his mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Nice Chucks, by the way.”

My face burned at the words, and I blinked rapidly before managing to nod at him. “Thanks,” I murmured, ducking my head to hide my blush. “I, um… I like your…” I didn’t know what to say first, because if I were to be honest, I kind of liked a lot about him. “Beanie,” I finished lamely, the first thing that came to mind, although my mind immediately followed with hair and face and eyebrow piercing before I managed to quell the word vomit forming in my head.

He chuckled, a sound that felt warm, that made my fingertips tingle from where they were pressed against the power button. “Well, my beanie is flattered,” he replied.

I rolled my eyes, but I could feel the shy smile slipping over my lips. “You know what I mean.”

He shrugged, flashing me that somehow sincere smirk of his. “I’d tell you to explain, but you do have a job to get to.”

I sighed and then poked at the TV screen, as if I were nudging his arm. “I’ll explain tonight then.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at me, grinning before I finally flicked the TV off. Even without him smiling at me, my heart still fluttered in my chest, going strong as I rose to my feet and slipped out the door toward my car. I scolded myself for thinking his grin was pretty darn cute for a virtual grin, because _honestly, Marco, you just met the guy._

The thought did nothing to quell the smile on my face or the hum on my lips as I rolled down the road towards Blockbuster.

 

I made it to work alongside Eren and Levi, hanging just behind the blue sedan. The car always reminded me of Levi himself, small and intimidating—although in the car’s case it might’ve just been the fact that Levi was in it that made it intimidating.

When I pulled up and stepped out, Eren was already glaring at me from the confines of his silver car. I just hummed on, determined to keep my happy mood. It’d been… it’d been a while since I’d come to work in a happy mood. And I liked it. I wanted the feeling to stay.

For example, I only let the idea that Levi would catch me for sure pass my mind for a moment. By the time I crossed the threshold into the store, it was gone. Good mood was firmly in place.

“Armin’s day today,” Eren muttered, moving past me and towards the desk.

I nodded in response, although he wasn’t looking at me. He didn’t need to remind me about Armin’s day. I’d grown used to the petite blonde swinging in every Thursday with McDonald’s and a few pieces of his grandfather’s pie for lunch. It was because of him that I’d stopped bringing lunch on Thursdays.

I made the wise decision to avoid talking to Eren, taking refuge in the sci-fi aisle. It was probably the smallest section, but the choices were good. Back to the Future and Star Wars and Avatar and Men in Black and more that I hadn’t actually watched. I wasn’t much of a sci-fi person, especially the more recent stuff. I pulled a copy of Men in Black off of the shelf and grimaced at the breaking case. I was barely out of diapers when the movie had come out, but I remembered it fondly. It was a shame to see the case so mistreated.

I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the case and, with a sigh, slipped it back in amongst its siblings, leaving me with nothing to do.

There were some days that I wondered how I got through at all. I’d be at home, lying in bed, and realize I didn’t even know how I’d gotten there. It was all just a blur of boredom and exhaustion and nothing to even look forward to. Those were the nights when I needed my parent’s box of stuff the most. Just to hold close at least.

But it didn’t have to be like that anymore.

I grinned to myself and hastily pulled out my notepad and pencil. I had something to look forward to now. His name was Jean Cerise-Pierre, and I knew next to nothing about him. But I had all the time in the world to find out.

Looking to make sure Levi was still snug in his office, I plopped down cross-legged on the floor and started to write out what I knew about him. He was in a VHS, and I found him in Levi’s office, and he didn’t look very French, and before I knew it I’d filled the front of two pages and had more to say.

I tapped the eraser of my pencil against my lip, wondering how I was supposed to say all this to him. What if the thought I’d had the night before was right? What if he didn’t even _know_ any of this? What if he didn’t know he was some kind of magical being?

Like a ghost or something. I’d heard of ghosts that didn’t know they were dead and just walked around, scaring people, not understanding why they couldn’t touch anything. Maybe he was a ghost.

I didn’t want him to be. If he were a ghost, then that meant he was dead. The thought made me sad, made my stomach feel heavy. No one deserves to die.

I shook the thought from my head. The wormhole theory still had some stuff going for it. For example, Levi was more of an alien than a necromancer. Although I could make an argument for both.

I flipped to a new page and started to organize my thoughts. I caught a glance at my watch. Only an hour or so had passed. I had a long time left. At least Armin would be swinging by soon—he was Eren’s best friend, but he was also my friend and talking to him was a nice way to kill time.

I focused on what I was writing in the meantime. I’d start off with the story of how I’d found him, explain why I was acting so weird sometimes… but I couldn’t think of how to say it all without sounding insane.

There were dark lines covering my paper, crossing out a million lines of thought that I was pretty sure would lead me nowhere. I was fighting the urge to start smacking my head against the racks in order to get my head thinking straight again.

Talking to Jean was easier than planning to talk to him.

I glanced at my watch again, noting how fast time had flown, so that it was only a few minutes until Armin arrived.

Armin was always on time. He was accountable, I suppose you could say, always making an effort to be presentable and reliable. I rose from my spot on the floor, brushed myself off, and counted the seconds until he arrived as I moved towards the door.

Right on time, as per usual, the hushed hiss of the door sliding open signaled Armin’s arrival. The bell had broken long ago, so Armin always knew to make his presence known. “I bear gifts!” he shouted, and the smell of hot fries backed up the claim.

I was just stepping out of the aisle and hurried over to take some of the load off his arms. He grinned at me over the red and white bag. “Happy noon, Marco,” he greeted.

I flashed him a wry grin. “Welcome to Blockbuster,” I replied, pulling the bag into my arms.

It had been balanced on a little box that I knew was full of pie. I wondered which kind it was as I shuffled over to drop the bag of food on the counter. Apple used to be my favorite kind of pie, but Armin’s grandfather had this crazy orange pie recipe that made me weak at the knees.

“I got you your chicken wrap and Eren his quarter pounder,” Armin explained, following behind me to place the box of pie on the counter. He grinned at Eren who was already beginning to dig through the McDonald’s bag in search of his food. “Is Levi here?”

The shutters of the office windows shuffled, and we all turned to see them snap shut. Armin smiled. “Good. I brought a salad for him; I know he doesn’t like the greasy stuff.”

Armin had never been afraid of Levi, although he certainly agreed that the man was intimidating. He admired Levi for being able to keep the store open for so long. Eren used to be the same way, but that was before he started working for him.

Once Eren finally detached from the bag, taking his food with him, Armin reached in to grab Levi’s salad. I saluted him as he ventured into Levi’s lair, and he rolled his eyes at me.

Eren munched noisily on his fries as I pulled mine out. He had two boxes of fries beside him, as always, because he had a nasty habit of stealing everyone else’s.

I pulled my food out slowly, leaning against the counter and trying not to look at Eren. I’d been hungry before Armin walked in, starving even, but I could hardly eat all of a sudden. When I glanced over at Eren, still silent and shoving fry after fry into his mouth, hands tight around the box, I couldn’t bring myself to eat. I tried to turn back to my own food, but it was hard to ignore the passive-aggressive garbage disposal going off beside me.

I glanced at the door to the office, safely shut and only letting out the animated tone of Armin chattering away with Levi. I glanced over at Eren. He’d taken to glaring at me over the edge of his first box of fries, and I cringed away from the sight before hanging my head in defeat.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

He didn’t stop eating. I flicked my eyes back over to him, hoping for some kind of change in his expression. He just narrowed his eyes a little more. Finally, he swallowed and shook the box at me. “You were humming,” he accused.

I blinked at him. “I was… what?”

He grimaced and pulled the box back towards his stomach. I expected him to get angry with me, to start waving his hands and yelling. But he just fidgeted, twirling a fry between two fingers. “You were humming.” He sighed, looking away from me, towards the front doors of the store. “This morning? Like you were really happy about something.”

I tried to think about why that mattered. I kind of was happy about something. Was that a bad thing? Was I not supposed to be happy? Was it all that weird to see me happy?

Maybe it was.

“I just…”

I stopped there, not knowing how to explain the good mood anyway. Saying I met someone would bring about questions about who they were, and I honestly didn’t know much about who Jean was—not where he lived, or what his family was like, or what school he went to, or anything like that.

And if I said it was about the VHS, Eren would just get angry again. Eren was impossible to talk to when he was angry. It was as if he didn’t hear anything beyond it.

“Just what?” he prompted, but he didn’t seem as annoyed as I’d expected him to.

I shrugged, cradling my food in my hands. “Just… had a good morning,” I murmured.

He groaned. “Marco, that’s the stupidest excuse—just tell me—…” He stopped and flopped onto his side, almost spilling his fries all over him. “Just…”

He sighed. His eyes were shut tight, showing off the dark circles under them. Armin took summer classes (mostly because he was interested in them), but I knew that Eren had to retake math because he’d failed it the year before. I wondered how long he’d been up the night before.

“Did you… meet someone?” he asked.

I frowned, furrowing my brow at him. “Yeah,” I admitted softly. He let out a pained grunt and turned his head to the side. “But not in the way you’re thinking… dork.”

He shrugged and then sat back up, hiding a smile as he adjusted his khaki shorts. “I don’t know…” he sighed. “It’s just… I got all mad at you yesterday and didn’t talk to you, and then you came in all happy this morning and didn’t even try to talk to me and…” His lips turned down; he scrunched up his face. “Like… I thought you didn’t care that I was mad at you.”

Cautiously, I reached out to nudge his shoulder. “Eren, of course I care.” He let my knuckles brush him and didn’t flinch away. “And I also know that you hold grudges, and I didn’t want to make you any angrier by trying to talk to you.”

He laughed—softly, but not humorlessly. “You make a good point,” he murmured.

I smirked at him. “I always do,” I replied.

Levi’s door swung open, and Armin slipped out, wishing Levi a good day as he made his way back to Eren and I. He stopped at the smiles on our faces. “I see you’ve made up,” he teased, poking at Eren’s knee. “Good. McDonald’s works wonders, I’ve found.”

Eren grumbled into his fries, but I could tell he was hiding a smile. He and Armin, I’d learned, had been best friends since they were little kids. Along with Mikasa, Eren’s adopted sister, they were inseparable. As a consequence, Armin always knew how to make Eren smile.

I’ll admit to feeling like a third wheel every now and then when I hung out with Armin and Eren, a fourth when Mikasa was thrown into the mix. Eren always made an effort to include me in the conversation, but they had more history, more to talk about. I was content to lean back and watch their back and forth.

Had I not known for sure that Eren had a thing for me, I would’ve guessed he and Armin were together. They had an easy relationship, the kind I’d been craving for a long time. Last summer, I’d had something like it, semesters before I’d ended up in the tiny town and creaky house I called home.

I had to drag myself out of that line of thought. I never went anywhere nice when I started to think like that. I was the one that dropped out of college; I was the only one to blame.

“What do you say, Marco?”

That was Eren. I lifted my head and blinked stupidly at he and Armin for a moment, wondering what I’d missed. Armin, of course, was the first to notice that I’d zoned out. “Friday Pizza Night—would it be all right if I tagged along? Class is canceled that night.”

I managed to smile at him. “The more the merrier,” I told him, wondering if he could pack as much pizza away as Eren could and if we’d have to buy more than usual.

Armin grinned. “I look forward to it, then,” he laughed.

I shrugged. “Not much to look forward to, really, unless you like watching Eren stuff his face,” I muttered, nudging Eren and making him splutter indignantly.

Armin just laughed. “Oh, trust me, I have plenty of experience in that field.”

Like I said, Armin always knew how to drag me back into the conversation. I don’t know how long we spent after that just talking and laughing and teasing Eren between us, but before I knew it, I was waving goodbye and heading to my car.

It wasn’t until I was trying not to burn myself on broiled black seats that I realized I wouldn’t be able to talk to Jean on Friday if we were having Friday Pizza Night.

Did that matter? I’d only known him for a few days, and I honestly didn’t really _know_ him, and he was just some guy in a TV, and I’d known Eren longer, and… And with any luck, he’d call me crazy that day, and I wouldn’t have to worry about not talking to him because he’d never want to talk to me again anyway.

With a heavy sigh, I turned my keys and let my car grumble to life, carefully avoiding a glance at the scribbled notepad in the passenger seat.

 

The VHS was waiting for me when I stepped through the front door, sitting patiently on the back of the couch. I could almost imagine Jean tapping his fingers and raising that pierced brow at me, silently muttering, “It took you long enough.”

I just stuck my tongue out at it. “Impatient,” I scolded, tossing my keys onto the cushions of the couch. But I smiled when I picked it up.

I hadn’t come up with a way to present what I knew to Jean on my way home—mostly because I’d been trying not to think about him thinking _I_ was crazy. But I figured it would just… happen. The night before had been easy when we ventured away from everything I’d planned to say. Maybe it was better that I didn’t plan anything.

I twirled the VHS in my hands as I slipped around the couch to start the video.

There was a flash of static across the screen for a moment, and then Jean came into focus. He was biting his lip, staring towards the left of the screen.

Blue moonlight highlighted his face, lit up his expression, one twisted up in some kind of apprehension. His fingers trembled along the edge of the bed, and his chest rose and fell faster than seemed normal.

My hand pressed against the TV as I leaned forward, my brow furrowed. “Jean?” I asked.

He jumped and whipped his head back around to look at me. “Marco.” His eyes snapped to the door and then back at me, and finally he let a smile slide over his lips. “Back from work?”

I settled down slowly. He’d looked so… scared. “What’s over there?” I asked, pointing towards the left side and lifting my eyebrow at him.

He narrowed his eyes at me, his smile immediately falling. “Door,” he muttered. “Why?”

I couldn’t meet his harsh gaze. It made me squirm, feel bad. “It’s just… you look over there a lot,” I murmured in response.

He scoffed. “No, I don’t.”

I smiled as I glanced up at him. “Yeah, you do.” I rose to my feet and shuffled over to sit on the couch. “Is there something weird about it?”

I inhaled sharply at the feel of my keys digging into my thigh and waited for his answer as I fumbled them out from under me. But he never spoke.

I looked up at him. He sat stony-faced, staring at the door again. “Jean?” I asked.

He took a long, slow breath and then turned back to me. “Makes sounds,” he muttered. “Maybe I have neighbors, and they’re always banging, hell if I know.”

I spluttered at the response, an ugly giggle coming out of me at the words. “Sorry I asked,” I snorted, tossing my keys somewhere they wouldn’t poke at me. “So you like…” I bit my lip. “You’ve never left that room, then?”

He rolled his eyes, leaning back on his hands. “Of course I’ve…” But he stopped himself before going any further. “Well, I mean… I haven’t been here forever.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Hadn’t been there forever—but he’d never left? The words didn’t sit right in my stomach, made me regret stuffing my face with orange pie and a chicken wrap of questionable quality. I leaned my elbows onto my knees and tried not to think about the twist the movement put in my stomach.

“So you don’t do anything?” I murmured, voice light as if I didn’t know that he’d practically admitted to being trapped in that room.

He huffed. “Oh, no, I do stuff all the time, dude. I am the shit at making up constellations.”

I swallowed and sighed. “I’m sorry,” I answered.

“Just shut up about it,” he snapped, and I dared a glance up at him. His lips were twisted to one side and then slowly he let them twitch up into a small smirk. “At least I’m not the one with a job, freakazoid.”

And I had to laugh at that, because if he was comparing being trapped in a single room to having a full-time job, then I knew exactly where he was coming from. “You’ve got me there,” I admitted.

He shrugged. “Meh, I wouldn’t know,” he muttered, watching the heels of his shoes kick at the floor. “Never actually had one of those.” He snorted suddenly and grinned. “Well, not one like yours.”

Something in my heart squeezed at the expression on his face, the kind that told me he’d spent a long time giving a crap and didn’t anymore. His head lolled to the side so he could fix me with that stare. “So about that weather,” he prompted.

My shoulders rose up, and I ducked my head. “The whole summer here, fall there thing?” I asked, and he made a sound of agreement. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe we live in different time zones?”

He outright laughed at that. “How the hell does that even work?” His voice sounded derisive but felt curious.

Unfortunately for him, I didn’t have an answer to his question. “If I’m being honest, Jean? I don’t know how any of this works.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Any of what?”

I sighed. “Well, I mean, talking to you. I don’t…” I felt myself shrinking under his questioning gaze, pulled my knees up to my chest and resisted the urge to hide my face behind them. “I don’t know how it works. I just pop in a VHS, and there you are.”

His jaw kind of… dropped. But his eyes remained set in a flat glare as he struggled to find words. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, the VHS, I… The one…” I leaned back a little, bringing my legs with me as I settled back into the couch. “I mean, I found this VHS two days ago, and when I tried to use it, I got you instead of a movie. And now whenever we talk, I just pop it in and turn on the TV, and there you are.”

He looked shell shocked for a second before he started to chuckle to himself. “Okay, yeah, that sounds ridiculous.”

I grimaced. “I’m telling the truth—It’s just—“

“No, look, I believe you,” he tried to say, but the way his lips turned up at the end belied the mockery in his tone. “Now that you mention it, it’s like I can feel, like—“ But he could barely finish his own sentence before breaking down into giggles. “No, like, the electricity—oh my god, the fucking—the waves of electricity—I can _feel_ them—“

“Jean, I’m serious,” I snapped, sitting up straighter, but he just went on laughing.

“Yeah, whatever, loser,” he snorted, throwing himself back to lie on his bed and sort his chuckles out. “How would that even work, oh my god…”

“I don’t know!” I let out a rough groan that physically hurt my throat, exasperation scratching at my chest. I reached my hands up to claw through my hair and straighten out my thoughts over the sound of Jean’s resounding laughter. “It’s like—I mean, it’s kind of like Skype—“

His laughter turned immediately into a whine. “Oh, no, here comes another Harry Potter fiasco.” He pushed himself up, balancing on his elbows to raise an unimpressed eyebrow at me, piercing glistening in the moonlight. “ _What’s Skype_?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t know what Skype was?

I tried to think through it. Maybe he lived in some part of the country that didn’t use much technology. Maybe he’d been raised Amish. Maybe his parents disapproved of tech.

But I didn’t know how else to describe talking to him. It was like watching a video, but you can’t talk to a video. It was like an interactive movie, but there wasn’t a plot.

“I don’t…” I shook my head, reaching and searching my head for some kind of explanation. “I don’t really… know how to describe it, I…” I bit down hard on my lip. I could at least try, couldn’t I? “I mean, it’s like a video, but you can talk to the people—like a phone call, but you can see the person you’re talking to—“

“Dude, that’s some futuristic shit right there,” he breathed, and I just blinked at him. He grimaced. “I mean, like, I don’t even have a cell phone.”

I couldn’t help it. “Are you Amish or something?” I blurted, and his face twisted at the words.

“Fuck no!” he snapped.

I ran a hand through my hair, shoving my parted bangs up to stand on end. “Then why on earth don’t you have a _cell phone_?”

He rolled his eyes, putting his hands up in mock self-defense. “Well, ‘scuse me, asshole, guess my line of work doesn’t support one of those clunky pieces of crap.”

I stared at him, pulling at my hair. “Clunky…?” I dug into my pocket and dragged out my phone, shoving it towards the screen. “How is this clunky? It’s literally the cheapest phone of all time, and it fits in my pocket just fine.”

His eyes went wide with shock, his mouth falling open. “Holy… _Dude_.” His gaze flicked between the phone and me. “Where did you _get_ that? No wonder that Skype thing sounds so sci-fi.”

I shook my head at him, pulling my phone back. “What? No, it doesn’t _have_ Skype. It’s not good enough for that.”

“What do you mean it’s not good enough for Skype videos?”

I shrugged, curling the phone to my chest. “Well, I mean, it’s no iPhone, you know—“

“The hell is an iPhone?”

I gaped at him. “You don’t know what an _iPhone_ is?”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I have a serious question.” He leveled me with a glare. “Are you, like, an alien or something? Because that would explain pretty much everything.”

An alien? I could’ve said the same about him. “No, I’m pretty sure I live on earth,” I told him.

And he looked almost disappointed. As if that had been the only plausible answer. “Well, fuck, then what’s with all your sci-fi crap?”

I just shook my head. Because I had other explanations. Not a different space—we knew enough about each other’s worlds to know we weren’t on different ones. But there was that blank look in his eyes whenever I mentioned something popular, an excitement when I mentioned things that hadn’t been popular in… _years_.

There was a lump in my throat. _That doesn’t make any sense_ , I tried to tell myself.

But I had to ask anyway—I needed the explanation, the facts. I leaned forward, setting my phone down beside me. “Jean, what year is it?”

He squinted, glanced to the side, as if needing to seriously consider it. “98,” he answered. His eyes flicked back to me. “Why?”

“It’s 2013,” I blurted.

His eyes widened. “What?”

I leaned back again, cleared my throat. “It’s not 1998, Jean, it’s 2013. Two thousand thirteen.” A grin found its way to my face. “Oh my gosh, but that explains so much!” I gasped.

But when I looked at him, he was far from grinning. His entire body was tense again, fingers twisted in the bed sheets. “No, it’s not…” His jaw tensed, a muscle popping when he gritted his teeth hard enough to hurt. “That doesn’t… I am _not_ …” He whipped his head around to glare at the door. “I’m so _done_ with this.”

Before I could ask what he meant, he was shoving himself to his feet, stomping towards the door, and ramming his shoulder into it. “Let me out!” he cried. “What is this, fucking Candid Camera? I don’t want any of this! Let me out of here, I’m done!”

The more he screamed, the more he shoved, the more static flashed across the TV screen. The video broke off and shuddered; one minute he was at the door, the next at the window, the next ripping the blankets off the bed, then shoving the lamp off the bedside table.

“Jean, I—“

The screen went still, but he wasn’t. He whipped around to me, face twisted in rage. “You shut the _fuck_ up!” He grabbed the suddenly intact lamp, the one I’d seen him break, and threw it at me. A shatter appeared across the screen, but it was almost instantly repairing itself as he stomped towards me. “I’m done with _you_ , and that weirdo in the glasses, and that other bitch with the fucking gray hair, and that one asshole with the nose, and I’m done—so fucking done—with you and your fucking _lies_ , you little shitwad!”

I flinched as he spit the word at me, my eyes feeling tight and hot, a lump forming in my throat. The TV flickered, and static flew across the screen, and he slammed his fist against the healing crack in it, fracturing it more. I flinched again at the sight of the spider web spreading throughout the screen. Could he break my TV from _inside_ it?

“Jean, I’m sorry, I didn’t—“

“Don’t talk to me!” he screamed. “Go away! Get out!”

I took too long, I guess, to scramble over and turn off the TV, because he spit at the screen, and suddenly it flicked off.

Along with the lights in the living room.

I shrieked, leaping to my feet and rushing to the light switch. The light flooded the room again when I flicked it, and to my relief, there was nothing to be afraid of.

I stared at the TV instead, wondering how he’d managed to turn himself off. How he’d managed to turn the _lamp_ off.

I didn’t know, didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I ran my hands through my hair, again and again, pulling hard at it and letting the tiny pricks of pain rush thoughts out of my head. I untangled knots and let my breathing slow as I scurried up the stairs. I wanted a shower and to sleep for years.

No more thinking. Especially not about Jean and whatever had happened downstairs. I was too scared to even take out the VHS and throw it away. I’d never seen someone so angry. I’d never seen my lights and TV just… shut off like that.

 

I contemplated texting Eren as I lay in bed a few hours later, staring at his number in my contacts. I could text him, or I could call him, _talk_ to him. That was what friends did, talk to each other when they needed comforting.

But I just… couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to say something. What would I say? That a guy in a TV had cursed me out and then shut off all of my lights? Maybe that I was tired and bored? That I couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to go to work the next day? That I was lonely?

I couldn’t say anything.

So I just flicked through my contacts, looked at the names of people that I knew I’d never contact again, because I didn’t have any other friends.

Mina Carolina.

Sam Linke-Jackson.

Mylius Zeramuski.

Daz, whose last name I’d never actually learned.

I let out a heaving sigh at Thomas’s contact. It still said Tommy, still had <3 next to it.

I tossed my phone to the side, having faith in its sturdiness as it rolled along the carpeted floor. I was too busy digging in my parent’s cardboard box to bother worrying about it anyway. My fingers found the well-worn edges of a book and pulled it out so I could look at it. The Absence of a Victim.

I didn’t read the message in the front; I didn’t need it. What I needed was the comfort of it pressed against my chest, of the scent of old pages in my nose. My mother’s scent had long since worn away, but if I closed my eyes, I could still pretend it was there. I dug back in the box and pulled out my father’s old wallet, cuddling it close to my stomach as I curled up under the covers.

I didn’t know why I’d even bothered trying to get to know Jean. Look at what had happened. I’d been caught up in some kind of supernatural occurrence, and he probably hated me, and Eren was probably still a little mad at me, and I could probably still lose my job—why had I even tried?

I had what I had left. I didn’t need anything else.

I curled into a ball and tried to remember what my mom’s perfume smelled like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm SO SORRY! This took forever to get out--I think the next chapter should come out sooner, but maybe you shouldn't hold me to my word, haha.  
> I wasn't sure about this chapter, but my beta liked it and maybe you guys did too, so fingers crossed. =D  
> Yes, things are coming together, my plot is evolving. *cackles*


	4. Reel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marco hangs out with friends, but his mind is elsewhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I feel like I should put a forewarning for a certain scene that has some rape/non-con elements--it's only implied and nothing is explicit, but I don't want you to run across it without being warned. I love you guys, don't make yourselves uncomfortable for me.
> 
> (Also this chapter is REALLY LONG I'M SO SORRY.)

When I was about six, I started to greatly dislike sunlight, mostly because I’d realized that it was responsible for the freckles on my face that other kids made fun of. When I was fourteen, I hated the sunburn and subsequent tan line that made me embarrassed to walk around outside. But at nineteen, I hated the sun for waking me up every morning.

That morning I just grunted at it and flipped my covers over my head. I knew for a fact that I had to get to work, but I also knew it was going to be an effort to even roll out of bed.

My shirt had ridden up during the night, leaving the perfect spot for my mom’s book to scratch against my stomach and keep me from getting comfortable enough to fall back asleep. The groan I let out into my pillow was overwhelmed by the sudden beeping of my alarm.

But I didn’t ignore it. I didn’t let it keep going or slam my hand down on the snooze button. I admitted to myself that I hadn’t really slept much all night anyway.

I was downstairs, already dressed and ready to go within half an hour.

I didn’t want to talk to Jean, didn’t want to see him, or even go near the TV. But I remembered tossing my keys off in that direction, so I had to suck it up and get a little closer.

On tiptoes, I inched towards the TV, eyes flicking between the blank screen and my keys glinting in the patch of faint sunlight shining through the windows. It was like a beacon or maybe like a warning.

But when I leaned down to scoop my keys off the floor, when I glanced at the TV and struggled to hold back an instinctual flinch… nothing happened. The TV sat unchanged.

It wasn’t until I turned around and saw the VHS on the back of the couch that I squeaked and ran for the door.

I tried to tell myself that locking the door behind me would keep me safe, even tried to tell myself that a VHS couldn’t hurt me, but my hands still trembled on the steering wheel the entire ride to work.

 

“Okay, you look like you’ve seen a ghost or something,” Eren accused, leaning over the counter to look at me. “Like, you’re completely out of it.”

I was too tired to lean away from him, just stayed slumped where I was on the counter, following the rare car that passed behind his head. “Meh,” I sighed, trailing with my eyes the path of a white one that had long since passed us by. “Just couldn’t sleep.”

“Bullshit,” he muttered, pushing off the counter to walk around me. “You’re always asleep, Marco.”

Maybe he was right.

“Not always,” I argued, but my tone was halfhearted.

“Yeah, whatever,” he grunted, plopping into his seat.

My chest really shouldn’t have tightened so much at the words. The last time I’d felt so sad about familiar words was when “Tommy <3” had become Thomas again. Although that one had been entirely my fault.

“So, pizza night,” Eren sang, interrupting the momentary shock to my system. “Armin will be supplying us with soda, you will—as always—supply the pizza, and tonight, I will be supplying the movies—um, you okay?”

He must’ve noticed the way I stiffened at the mention of movies. I didn’t look at him, instead keeping my gaze fixed on the hard surface of the counter. “Um, no movies,” I muttered, mind racing to find an excuse. Eren didn’t like the sound of no, and I didn’t like the sound of whining. “TV’s kind of wonky lately.”

He groaned. “Man, I hate when your TV does that,” he muttered, spinning his chair. “Want me to bring some music then?”

I shrugged, wondering what kind he’d bring that time. Eren’s taste in music varied from death metal to punk pop to synth jazz. I didn’t understand it, but to each their own. “You can if you want,” I told him. I trusted Armin to reign him in if he got a little too rowdy with the music anyway.

Eren fist pumped the air and then twirled his seat around. “Yes!”

I smiled at him, just a little one. I remembered having wanted a little brother when I was a kid. Eren filled that gap well enough. “As long as Armin promises to preview your picks,” I muttered.

He stopped abruptly in his spinning, back to me. I sat up a little straighter, noticing his ducked head and hunched shoulders. “Um, you know,” he murmured. “Armin doesn’t have to come.”

I squinted at him, tilting my head. “Why not?”

He turned a little, not enough to face me but enough to glance over his shoulder at me. “Well, I mean…” He huffed and turned away again. “Armin’s cool and all, and I love hanging out with him, but like… Friday Pizza Night is _our_ thing, and if you don’t want him to interrupt it, I can tell him not to come.”

I sighed, resting my cheek in the palm of my hand as I leaned against the counter. “Eren, I like to consider Armin my friend too. And if he wants to hang out with us, then I’m glad to let him.”

If I was being honest, Armin was one of the only other friends I had. It was more of a “please come,” than a “sure, tag along.” But I knew what Eren wanted to hear. I knew he wanted me to tell him that he was right and I’d rather just hang out with him all night long, eating pizza and drinking soda and listening to punk pop.

Eren just sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.” He whipped around to me and flashed me a grin. I’d be lying if I said he hid his disappointment well in the shuddering corners of his smile. “He’s excited about it anyway; don’t want to disappoint him.”

I nodded and glanced back down at the counter beneath my forearms. “Remind him it’s not much to look forward to,” I chuckled.

He twirled a few more times in his seat and then with a heaving sigh, he shot to his feet. “I’m gonna call my mom, see if they let her out yet,” he muttered, pulling his phone from his pocket and heading for the bathroom doors.

I gave him a thumbs-up as he dialed her number. She was probably just coming out of physical therapy for the day. Years ago, she’d been paralyzed from the waist down in an attempted robbery, but she was still the most stubborn woman I’d ever met. One Friday, Eren stayed at my place too long, and she honked outside my door for half an hour, pissing off my sleeping neighbors, until he hustled out to her car. She had one specially made for her, and it was nicer than mine too.

With Eren out of the room, I was left to my own devices, and my traitorous thoughts immediately went to Jean. I tried shoving them out by pressing my forehead to the cold counter, but that just seemed to make it harder. The cold reminded me of the autumn that Jean was trapped in; closing my eyes reminded me of the darkness the room had suddenly plunged into.

I snapped my head back up and grimaced at the glass doors across from me.

1998\. I’d been… four years old in 1998. Jean was eighteen, he’d said. That would make him at least thirty in 2013.

But he was still eighteen, and he still looked eighteen—dare I say it, he even acted eighteen. I couldn’t figure it out; how was he from 1998 if he hadn’t _aged_?

Did wormholes cross time as well as space?

I had a feeling that explanation wasn’t going to work anymore.

I crossed my arms on the counter and leaned my face into them. I needed new theories.

With a little imagination, there were plenty of possibilities. A monster that feeds off electricity, a normal person trapped in some kind of reality TV show, like the Truman Show or something—didn’t that come out in 1998? Coincidence?

I drummed my fingers along the counter, trying not to bite my lip and end up with another bruised scab like before. I was sure I could find something reasonable, something that really made sense—but my mind kept coming back to one conclusion.

Soul, spirit, poltergeist, haunting—

I didn’t want Jean to be a ghost. I’d grown up believing ghosts couldn’t possibly be all bad—that there had to be good ghosts out there, like Casper, but friendly or not, ghosts were dead.

I didn’t want Jean to be dead. I didn’t want anyone to be dead…

“Ugh, I have to leave at nine,” Eren whined as he popped out of the bathroom.

I glanced up at him and smiled, grateful for a distraction. “Mrs. Jaeger gave you a curfew again?”

He rolled his eyes and grinned as he sidled up to lean against the counter. “You don’t have to call her that, man—she already said you could call her Carla.”

I sighed but still flashed him a smile. “I know, I always forget.”

He smirked and leaned over the counter towards me. “You know, she really likes you,” he told me. His face was completely serious. “She says you should come over someday.”

“Maybe someday,” I answered, with no intention of taking him up on the offer.

I liked Carla Jaeger as much as the next guy, but eating dinner with his family felt too much like a “meeting the parents” situation, and I felt like that would just lead him on, disappoint him all the more when it came time to make it obvious that I didn’t like him. I didn’t want to hurt him that way.

“Yeah, so I think Armin might leave early, so maybe we’ll get some alone time anyway—“ I didn’t even have to look at him before he started spluttering. “I mean, like, quality—bonding—you know, friend time—I—“

The sound of a fist pounding on a window behind us shot me almost out of my seat, and Eren found himself nursing the bruised tip of his tongue after Levi shouted for us to, “Get back to work, you shitty brats!”

As if there were anything to do.

Hours passed in a hot, sticky silence as we waited for the end of our shift, and there wasn’t anything to while it away except for shooting down music choices and the thought of the Hopefully-Not-A-Ghost living in my VCR.

 

I waved goodbye to Eren as I headed for my car. He was off to select the perfect CD and probably pick up Armin, and I was off to order the pizza and shiver in fear on my couch, staring at the TV because I was too afraid to turn away from it.

I heaved out a sigh as I popped open my car door and hoped no one noticed the exaggerated grimace on my face.

I didn’t want to talk to Jean, I knew—I reminded myself of that as I made to step up into my car. The least of the reasons not to talk to him was that he was maybe still mad at me. Piled on top of that flimsy reason was fear and guilt and nerves.

“Marco.”

I whipped around, squeaking in surprise when my foot slipped and almost sent me flying to the ground.

Levi stood behind me, arms crossed, a heavy messenger bag hanging at his side. He squinted at me as I righted myself, and dread filled my gut. He knew. He knew that I’d stolen the VHS, he knew that I was a dirty, no good thief, he knew that I was—

“You ever had your palm read?”

I blinked at him stupidly for a moment. “Um…”

I looked back into my car, as if there were something in there that could save me—like the VHS sitting in the passenger seat. My eyes widened to at least the size of dinner plates. _Cheese and rice, how the_ heck _did it get there?_

I whipped back around to Levi when he cleared his throat. He just lifted an eyebrow at me. I wondered how freaked out I looked. “U-um, no, I haven’t.”

Maybe he couldn’t see clearly what it was. And honestly, maybe he wouldn’t know it was his. There were plenty of blank VHSs out there. Probably millions. Well, thousands, let’s be honest; it was 2013, not 1998.

“Get down here.”

I swallowed hard. He was holding out one thin hand for mine, eyes demanding more than asking, and with a tiny nod, I slipped off the step up of my car and lowered my hand into his grasp.

His hold was unforgiving; I struggled to hide a whimper of pain.

“Your right is full of things that you’ve accumulated in your lifetime,” he muttered, glaring at my palm. His eyes flicked up to mine, and his lips quirked to the side, not quite a frown but not exactly a smirk. “Like karma.”

Oh, gosh, oh no, he definitely knew, he was just messing with me. Eren had long since left, I was going to be an unidentifiable body left in a ditch at the side of the road.

He looked back down at my hand and studied the lines crisscrossing my palm. He trailed his fingers lightly over mine, eyes flicking back and forth along every little line.

I wondered what he saw. I wondered if there was any truth to a palm reading. All I knew was that if a lifeline was short, you were probably going to die young. I didn’t even know which one my lifeline was.

Finally, he let my hand drop, and I curled it up to my chest. He squinted at me again. “You fall in love easily. You’re always tired. You let external forces determine your lifestyle,” he told me. “And you’ve suffered emotional trauma.”

I took in a sharp breath at the words, and he noticed, his expression seeming to soften just the tiniest bit. My teeth clamped down on my lip to keep it from trembling. I hadn’t told anyone about what had happened a year before. I hadn’t told Levi, and he hadn’t asked. All Eren knew was that my parents were gone, not how or what had happened afterward. All of the people I’d ever told were sitting and collecting dust in my phone contacts, untouched, uncalled.

He shook his head, adjusted the strap of his messenger bag. “I’m not going to ask what happened,” he sighed, almost sounding bored with the topic. “There’s something off about you today. If you need to get rest, get it this weekend.”

And with that, he turned away and headed for his car.

I didn’t know what to say. I thought I’d been hiding it so well, but if _Levi_ could tell there really was something up with me, then maybe I’d been fooling myself.

I pulled myself into my car but stopped when I saw the VHS still sitting on the passenger seat. “I’m not talking to you,” I hissed, leaning over to shove it onto the floor. Even if Levi turned around again, there was no way he’d see it on the floor or even be able to make out what it was.

I settled into the drivers seat, focused on turning my truck on, focused on pulling out of the parking lot and into the road, focused on driving home and pizza and not a VHS or the lines in my palm.

 

The first thought in my mind as I stepped through my front door was where to put the VHS so that Eren couldn’t find it.

I typed in the pizza place’s number and held my phone against my ear with my shoulder as I hunted around my house for the perfect hiding place. “Marco, long time, no call,” came the steady voice on the other end.

I smiled into the receiver, although the expression was more distracted than anything. “Sorry, Bert—but, hey, Friday Pizza Night again,” I explained, giving the living room one last scan over before deciding on the kitchen.

“I’m convinced you don’t even like pizza,” Bertholdt replied, clicking his tongue. “Do you ever order one just for you?”

I shrugged although I knew he couldn’t see it. “Don’t have the money to spare—Eren usually chips in on pizza night.”

“Of course.” There was a clicking sound, probably a pen. “Usual?”

I squinted at the cabinets and drawers, wondering which one Eren was least likely to rip open in search of chips. “I think we’ll need another medium,” I corrected.

Bert hummed. “Making new friends, huh?” he murmured, the sound of his pen scribbling down the order barely audible. “That’s gonna be another seven bucks.”

I sighed. “I know,” I muttered, deciding there was nowhere Eren wouldn’t look for chips and leaving the kitchen to head upstairs.

“Okay, it should be there in half an hour, then,” he told me, clicking his pen.

“Tell Reiner not to eat any of it,” I sighed, wondering if it’d be better to put the VHS in the bathroom or one of the guest rooms.

Bert chuckled. “Oh, uh, Reiner’s not delivering today.”

I blinked, finally looking up and paying attention. “Is he okay?”

“Oh, man, yeah, don’t worry about him,” he laughed. “He broke his leg on some dumb dare.”

“Oh,” I murmured. I decided I didn’t want that VHS anywhere near my bedroom, so I slipped into the room furthest from it, the bathroom. “Well, I hope he gets better soon.”

“He’s fine—I’m pretty sure Reiner could bounce back from a shot to the head; guy’s a tank,” Bert assured.

I couldn’t disagree with that—at the very least, Reiner was _built_ like a tank. “You’re probably right,” I laughed, setting the VHS down on the sink. “Tell him I said hi then. Expect a call next week.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he answered, and with a click, he left me with dial tone.

I glared at the VHS on the sink, screwing my lips to the side as I set the phone down. “Are you gonna go jumping around everywhere?” I asked, only half expecting an answer.

I didn’t get one, honestly to my relief. The VHS just sat there, silent, somehow defiant. I tried not to imagine Jean, crossing his arms and twisting his lips in silence.

I sighed, leaning against the counter and silently sending a prayer to a dismissive God that I wouldn’t have to explain myself to Eren later on. Glaring at the VHS, I pulled open the mirror cabinet hanging over the sink and shoved the tape inside.

The doorbell was ringing by the time I shuffled back downstairs, and I gave myself a second just to take a deep breath. Suddenly, my mind was racing with some kind of fear that made it hard to move. You’d think I was about to make some life changing speech and not just hang out with some friends. I scolded myself, asked what I was so nervous about anyway.

But it was the same feeling I got every Friday, the same one I knew I’d never be able to accurately describe. It was a voice in the back of my head saying, “This is it, your second chance, don’t screw it up.” It was a fear that maybe I’d feel lonely even surrounded by people. It was a churning in my stomach that said maybe my fears weren’t legitimate.

I shoved the thoughts out of my head and willed them away as I pulled open the door. Eren plowed into the living room without even a greeting. “I have the perfect CD!” he shouted, whipping around in search of my old radio.

Armin stumbled through the door after him, arms filled to the brim with things that I was almost positive Eren had forced him to get. Soda, of course, but also chips and Sno Balls, and a million more packages of junk food that Armin was barely able to hold.

I grimaced as I leaned forward to help him with his load. “You didn’t have to buy so much,” I reminded him, pulling a bag or two into my arms.

He just grinned. “It’s really no problem,” he laughed, looking a little more sane with a lighter load. He winked at me as we headed to the kitchen to set everything down. “I’m adding it to Eren’s tab, anyway. He owes me two hundred and counting.”

I rolled my eyes, unable to bring myself to doubt it.

Eren groaned, leaning into the kitchen from the living room. “Where is your radio, man?”

I blinked at him. “It’s behind the TV, Eren. Where it always is?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Oh, yeah, duh, of course—except it’s not.”

I glanced at Armin, smiled nervously, turned back to Eren. It was always behind the TV—I hardly used it for anything, so I left it somewhere that didn’t make too much clutter. It was always there.

Terror heated my stomach, and I fought the urge to wrap my arms around myself. Turns off lights, teleports VHS tapes… moves _radios_?

“I’ll go look for it,” I assured. I forced myself to smile at Armin and hoped it didn’t look as fake as it felt. “You can put the soda in the freezer for now.”

He nodded and headed over to finish putting things away on his own, and I scooted past Eren, praying I wouldn’t find the radio where I was scared it would be.

I took the steps two at a time, and every few paces, I glanced back down into the living room, praying I wouldn’t see the VHS appear on the back of the couch or somewhere else that Eren would find it. It had to be where I left it—it just had to be. Nestled in between shaving cream and a bottle of sleeping pills, where I’d left it.

I slipped into the bathroom, going straight to the cabinet and not even glancing around the room.

The whine I let out when I saw that the cabinet was empty of any VHS tapes was almost painful in my throat. How? How was it doing this? And _why_?

“I know I’m not talking to you today, but you’re the one who got mad at me,” I breathed, digging uselessly through the junk in the cabinet, as if I’d somehow magically discover where the tape had gone.

My hands left the half-empty bottles on that first shelf to slam the door shut. I ran my fingers through my hair, gritted my teeth. “Where are you?” I hissed.

My eyes flicked over the rest of the room, finally resting in the bathtub behind me, where the radio sat as if I’d put it there in the first place. I grimaced. “Yeah, okay, now where are _you_?” I muttered, leaning over to grab it.

There was nothing underneath the radio, and it wasn’t wet, at least. But I still felt uneasy; where _was_ it? And if it could move objects other than itself, then what else would it move?

Sharp things came to mind—lots of knives and shattered glasses.

I hurried out of the room and back downstairs.

“When’s the pizza coming?” Eren called from the kitchen.

“Bert said a half hour,” I answered, setting the radio down on the arm of the couch.

There it was. The VHS, sitting cheekily on the couch, taunting me with its very presence.

I managed to hold back a groan and stomped over to it, picking it up and shoving it between the cushions just as Eren stepped out of the kitchen. He cocked an eyebrow at me when I looked up at him. “Um… what you doing there?”

I felt my face heat up with a blush. “It’s, um…” I looked at my hands buried between the couch cushions. “I thought I dropped something, but I can’t find it so—“

“Let me help—“

“No!” He stopped in his tracks, eyes wide. I winced. “Um, it’s not here. I must’ve left it in my room or something—I’ll get it later.”

I straightened out before grabbing the radio and pushing it closer to him. “You brought music?” I asked, offering him a breathless little smile.

He grinned. “Oh, man, you’re gonna like these guys—I swear they’re like just about to become huge!”

I just hoped they were the kind of band I could stomach instead of the kind that I ended up nodding politely about when Eren started to rant about them.

I headed into the kitchen as Eren fumbled the CD in, clearing up a spot for him to set the radio down. “Okay, so, I’m just going to skip ahead to the one that’s popular right now, but once you guys like that one, I’ll play it all from the beginning, because it’s kind of perfect,” he explained, hastily punching buttons to skip songs.

He skipped three songs, but I only heard the beginning riff of one of them until he hit number four, one that started with the ticking of a drumbeat. It wasn’t so bad so far—and when the singer started up, I wasn’t immediately scared away.

Eren was already singing along, grabbing a package of Sno Balls and crooning into it like a microphone. “All I am! Is a man! I want the world! In my hands!”

Armin laughed and then made a little disgusted noise. “Eren, this song is always on the radio—give it a rest already!”

“The Neighbourhood is a gift to mankind, Armin,” Eren replied, patting my radio protectively. “And besides, Marco hasn’t heard it before, right, Marco?”

My face fell, and I straightened out from leaning on the counter. “No, I haven’t,” I murmured, heading for the fridge. Armin had brought Dr. Pepper, and I was about ready to chug it. Long ago, I’d promised to never drink alcohol, but soda was not out of bounds as far as sorrow-drowning material went.

Armin cocked an eyebrow at me. “What? How have you not heard it yet?” he asked.

Eren, eloquent as ever, butted in before I could reply. “Marco never listens to music,” he explained, popping open his Sno Balls. “He’s paranoid he’ll crash his car or something if he listens to the radio while he’s driving.”

I swallowed hard, tried to ignore the stinging heat behind my eyes. “Things happen, Eren,” I answered, quickly, before my throat became too thick to speak through. I pulled out the Dr. Pepper and smiled at him and Armin. “What other songs do you like?”

Eren grinned, as if he didn’t notice the way my face had fallen—Armin, at least, seemed a little concerned, but he decided not to say anything about it, bless him. Instead of pushing it, he let me change the subject. “Probably all of them,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “ _Supposedly_ , Eren knew The Neighbourhood long before they ever ended up on the radio.”

Eren scoffed, placing an affronted hand over his heart. “I did so! And I’m proud of them for making it on the radio, so there.”

Armin flashed me a conspiratorial wink as Eren turned back to the radio. “Hipster,” he mouthed. I held back a snicker.

“Okay, I’m going to say Female Robbery is my favorite. Maybe you’ll like it.” The glint in Eren’s eyes was enough to tell me that he expected me to. I resigned myself to my fate with little more than a sip of a soda and a polite smile.

With the blare of music playing in the background, Armin filled me in on all of the summer classes he’d been working in so far. He was practically a natural born genius, learning just because he wanted to. He’d told me many times before that he was aiming to become a marine biologist.

In contrast to Armin’s excited chattering, Eren spent almost the entire wait for the pizza complaining about his summer class and telling us the backstory to every song and the meaning behind every lyric. I liked some of them, but it wasn’t all to my tastes. I remembered the only band that Eren had actually managed to sell me on was Bastille, and their music was much different from The Neighbourhood.

By the time the CD had played through almost every song, Armin and Eren were caught in their own conversation, and the sound of the doorbell ringing was a relief. “I’ve got it,” I assured, rising to my feet and heading for the door, and although Armin looked like he wanted to offer his help, Eren was a little too caught up in the conversation to pay much attention.

It was a good thing he hung behind, though. The moment I walked around the couch and towards the door, the VHS practically appeared in front of me. I gritted my teeth and kicked it under the couch without a word. But before I could even take a few steps, I was already stumbling over the VHS again. The squeak of surprise I let out was almost embarrassing, and I just barely managed to catch myself on the back of the couch before falling on my face.

“You okay?” Armin called.

“I’m fine, just tripped!” I called back, glaring down at the VHS. “ _You_ ,” I hissed, “are just being rude now.”

I picked it up and tucked it under my shirt, wondering if there were some way I could tape it to myself or something so it didn’t appear at some other inopportune moment.

It was muggy and warm outside, uncomfortable to breathe in. I was sweating in seconds, hastily pulling cash out of my pocket before even looking up at the delivery person.

I gasped when I did, eyes wide. “Annie?”

Her expression was completely deadpan. “Hurry up and pay me already,” she sighed.

I nodded, handing her the money. She readjusted her grip on the pizzas to take it. “I didn’t know you worked at the pizza place,” I managed. Seeing Annie do such a mundane job kind of killed some of the mystery surrounding her.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and if Turtle hadn’t begged me, you never would have,” she muttered.

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Turtle?”

She pulled out the pizza without a word, handing me the boxes. The scent of melted cheese and pepperoni filled the night air and made it a little more bearable to breathe in. “Bert,” she finally told me, and then whipped around, headed back down to her car. She turned to glare at me over her shoulder. “You dropped your movie.”

I gasped, almost fumbling the pizza when I glanced down at the ground to find… nothing there. I grimaced. It definitely wasn’t tucked away in my shirt anymore, that was for sure.

“Eren, grab the pizza for me!” I called as I shuffled back inside, knocking the door shut with my hip.

Eren came racing out of the kitchen like a bullet, practically drooling already. “Twenty four, this time,” I told him. “Twelve’s half, so your cut’s fourteen today.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “I failed twelfth grade math, not third,” he muttered, hefting the pizzas into his arms.

Armin wandered out of the kitchen, probably lured by the scent that had invaded the entirety of the living room already. “Oh, I can chip in if you want—“ he offered, but I shushed him with a wave of my hand.

“Armin, you bought snacks, and you buy us lunch every Thursday—we can cover it,” I assured him.

He didn’t look so assured, but he nodded his thanks. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” I side-eyed Eren and, leaning towards Armin as I passed him, said, “And Eren’s a rich kid; he’s good for it.”

Armin laughed at that. “Two hundred and counting,” he reminded me. “Duly noted.”

I grinned at the words. “I’ll get the plates,” I called back to Eren, slipping into the kitchen past Armin.

Behind me, Eren attempted to open one of the boxes while still balancing the other two in one arm. I trusted Armin to reign the daredevil in.

I still wondered how many slices the guy could pack away anyway—Eren and I always managed to finish two mediums, but maybe a whole medium pizza was too much for someone as petite as Armin. The most I’d ever seen him eat at once was the McDonald’s Fish Fillet he occasionally got for himself. Of course, leftovers were always appreciated if he couldn’t finish.

I contemplated which plates to use this time as I stopped in front of the counter—the paper ones so Eren couldn’t break any or the china ones so Armin felt more at home? I found my drink on the counter and took a swig as I thought about it, finally deciding on the drawer with the paper plates. The last time I’d gone with china, I’d been picking shards out of my socks for a week straight. Eren had a habit of pulverizing things when he dropped them. He’d lost four phones that way.

I reached out with one hand to pull the drawer open, and immediately my mouth fell open on a gasp. The VHS was sitting on the plates, but this time there were _words_ on it. Written in silver sharpie across the black plastic, the phrase “Whiny little slut,” shone in the weak kitchen light.

The cup slipped from my hand and smashed against the floor. “Fffudge nuggets!” I gasped, stumbling back.

“Marco!” Eren called. “Are you okay?”

There was a thump as he set the pizzas down, and without even thinking about it, I reached out and swiped Armin’s glass off the counter as well, wincing at the shattering sound it made.

“Don’t come in!” I shouted back to him. “I broke some glasses.” He leaned into the doorway, but I just waved him off. “You can take the TV off its table and start eating there; I’ll clean up the cups.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I can help—“

I snorted and hoped I didn’t sound too desperate. “Last time you tried to help me clean up glass you needed stitches,” I replied.

His face flushed red, and he looked away. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Okay.”

He slipped back into the living room, leaving me with the mess and a ball of anxiety quickly building in my gut. I glared down at the VHS once I heard the sound of the TV sliding off its table, and the little tape was still there, sitting smug and pretty in the drawer. I leaned towards it, and although my freckles had always made it hard to be intimidating, I could feel my face twist into an expression that I would’ve been afraid to see on myself.

“I have been nothing but nice to you, and this is uncalled for,” I hissed. “Leave. Me. Alone.”

I slammed the drawer shut, turning around and almost biting my tongue in surprise when I saw it on the edge of the sink. With a hiss of a scream, I ripped it off the counter and stormed over to the fridge, dodging glass shards in my way. I wrenched the freezer door open and threw the VHS in, not caring about breaking it or ruining the metal tape that allowed it to work—I just wanted it gone.

I took a deep breath, raked stray strands of hair back from my face but didn’t bother rearranging its normal parting. _Ignore it, Marco. Ignore it._

I snapped open one of the cabinets under the sink instead of thinking about it, digging out a dustpan and setting about cleaning up glass shards from the floor. It was only after I’d cleaned up at least half of the mess that I started to regret smashing the cups. They were good cups—and goodness knew I couldn’t afford to replace them.

And besides, why had I let a stupid VHS get me so worked up?

I sat there for what felt like a while, staring at shifting glass in the dustpan and listening to the CD play some song about fear. Eren always had been into the angst-y kind of music.

He and Armin were still talking in the living room, Eren’s voice excited and loud as usual. About the college they were both planning on heading to. Somewhere far out of state, and Mikasa was sure to follow.

Something cold churned in my stomach as I listened along. As much as I hated having to flit nervously around Eren’s occasional advances… he was kind of the only friend I had. And soon enough, he’d be gone…

I glanced at the freezer, took a deep breath, and then rose to my feet to dump the glass shards into the trash. I fished two new cups from a cabinet and filled them with soda, bracing myself to leave the room.

Eren’s hands were greasy, and he had a smear of sauce on his lips, but he didn’t seem to care in the slightest. He slammed his hands on the table around the box that he’d begun using as a makeshift plate. “And once we graduate, we can arrest every criminal—wipe them out, so that everyone can feel safe in their own home—“

Armin patted Eren’s hand on the table. “You and Mikasa can, you mean,” he laughed. “I’m going to be exploring the ocean, remember?”

Eren looked surprised, and then he seemed to remember, laughing it off and waving his hand at Armin. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, we’ll make sure you’re safe out on your little boat.”

Armin rolled his eyes until his gaze caught mine. He grinned. I managed to smile back at him. “Hey, sorry, I kind of knocked over our cups,” I explained, handing him one.

He looked grateful for it, taking a swig. “That’s fine—I hope you didn’t hurt yourself?”

I shook my head. “No worries; I’m fine.”

Eren had separated the pizzas, one for him, one for me, one for Armin. I noted with a hint of surprise, that Armin had already downed at least half of his. I picked up mine and plopped down onto the couch.

It was kind of weird sitting on the couch without the TV to stare at. I curled my knees to my chest just for a moment before crossing them under me, balancing the pizza box in my lap.

“So, Marco, you know, I don’t think you’ve ever told me what school you go to—“

Eren made a loud, tactless grunt and shook his head at Armin before he could finish what he was saying. I sighed. Eren didn’t know everything that had happened, just that I didn’t like talking about school. He tried to be good about it, but sometimes…

Armin looked thoroughly puzzled, glancing between me and Eren. “Um…”

I offered him a light smile, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt. “I dropped out,” I told him. I guess it made sense he didn’t know—he only came to Blockbuster on Thursdays. For all he knew, I went to some community college nearby or took online classes.

He looked solemn enough about it. I remembered Eren had practically leapt out of his seat in curiosity once he’d figured it out. “That’s a shame. Ever think of going back?”

I felt my face fall and squirmed a bit in my seat. I knew the answer he was expecting—I expected it of myself.

_Of course, just don’t have the money._

_It was a mistake back then._

_I’d be better off with a college degree._

_I’d get to do what I was supposed to with my life._

“Not really,” I answered, surprised by the honesty in my voice. His expression changed into something that made me sick to my stomach—confused, surprised… I straightened out and smiled at him. “It’s just really not in the cards right now, you know? Can’t exactly put myself through college on a Blockbuster salary, right?”

Eren snorted, interrupting whatever Armin was about to say, but I was satisfied by the way his face softened in understanding before Eren started talking. “Damn right!” Eren exclaimed. He turned a wide-eyed gaze at me, fire burning behind his eyes. “You know what my dad said yesterday?”

Armin rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy,” he mouthed at me.

“He said he might cut me off! Can you believe that? That’s ridiculous! What did I do wrong, anyway?”

“Did your mom find out about your tattoo?” I asked, not realizing the question was loaded until Armin’s face went blank in surprise.

He whipped around to Eren. “What tattoo!”

Eren flushed red, looking intently down at his pizza and shoving it in his mouth instead of answering. Armin glared at him, but the expression was halfhearted. “Mikasa’s going to kill you.”

Eren groaned around his mouthful of pizza. He made a muffled sound that might’ve been, “Don’t tell her.” But it could easily have been, “I’m so dead.”

I hid a snicker behind my hand. “Sorry,” I murmured. Eren squinched his face up at me in response, but I could tell he would’ve been grinning if not for his chipmunk cheeks full of pizza.

“So, then, what were you majoring in, if you don’t mind me asking?” Armin asked, pulling a pepperoni off his pizza. I had a feeling he was nearing his face-stuffing limit.

Fortunately for me, I had a chance to answer him myself, as Eren couldn’t speak through his slice of pizza. “Um, same as Eren, actually,” I told him. “I wanted to be a cop.”

He smiled. “Really? That’s cool. You two have a lot in common, huh?”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

“So, what happened to make you leave?”

I tried not to let my expression change as I let the words sink in. At least he hadn’t said “quit.” “Give up.” At least he’d tried to sugarcoat it. At least he hadn’t said “run away.”

“Personal issues,” I told him, forcing a smile that I knew didn’t look forced—I’d practiced it enough times. “Just a big combination of things, you know?”

He nodded, picking at his pizza still. “That makes sense…” He bit his lip and then swallowed, as if preparing to say something. “So, is it… hard?”

I blinked at him in surprise. “Is… what hard?”

Eren jutted in, having finally swallowed enough pizza to get a word in edgewise. “College. Armin’s scared it’s gonna be really hard and all.”

My face fell. I didn’t know how to tell him that it could go either way—I wanted to assuage his fears, not confirm them.

“It, um…” I bit my lip. “You’re a smart guy, Armin. I’m sure you’ll be fine. It was a bit hard for me, but you’re going into a different major anyway, so my experience isn’t much to go off.”

He smiled, but it was half-hearted, unconvinced. “Yes, of course.”

I could tell I hadn’t done anything to make him feel better, but I didn’t know what else to say. He turned to Eren and asked a question before I could contemplate it anyway, and once again I was left on the sidelines to watch their conversation.

That feeling came back as I settled back into my seat. It felt cold in my gut, a realization that crawled up my throat and had to be choked down. I could put a word to it, but when I did, it felt petty. _Lonely_.

I curled one leg to my chest, balancing my pizza box on my thigh. _I don’t have a reason—a right—to feel that way_ , I told myself.

_If you want to be included in the conversation_ , they’d probably say, _you should just jump in_.

It wasn’t that easy.

I let them continue talking, chewing methodically on a slice of pizza that I’d long since lost interest in. Had it ever felt like this back then? I tried to remember those days in the corner of a dorm room, watching my friends chattering excitedly back and forth about plans and classes—but I found myself falling out of that line of thought, because I knew it hadn’t been like that. At least not until after…

“Hey, Marco, what was in Levi’s VHS anyway?”

My stomach felt cold again, but it was different from before. I found myself glaring at Eren before I could school my expression into something neutral. “Nothing, Eren, let it go,” I snapped.

Eren blinked at me, surprised, until his lips twisted into a grimace. “I’m just asking—what’s your problem?” he muttered.

I sighed, looking away. “Sorry, I…” I bit my lip. “I didn’t mean to snap; I’ve just been feeling kind of stressed lately.”

Eren snorted. “Why? It’s not like you do anything all day.”

“Eren!” Armin gasped. He slapped his arm. “Don’t be rude.”

Eren grunted in response, hunching his shoulders. “Sorry.”

I didn’t respond verbally, just nodded, picked a pepperoni off my half-forgotten pizza. I swallowed before deciding on what to say. “It’s fine, Eren. I never even watched the VHS.” I nodded at the TV, which he’d gone so far as to unplug. “Broken, remember? I never got a chance to watch it.”

Eren sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Wish I had a VCR,” he mumbled. He side-eyed me, squinting suspiciously. “Hey, but if you can’t watch it, why haven’t you given it back to Levi yet?”

“Haven’t found a way to sneak it back in yet,” I answered, my response almost immediate.

It wasn’t true—I hadn’t seriously considered returning it. But… it made sense. Just give the VHS back. Give the problem back, run away from it. Take the easy way out again.

I swallowed the thick feeling in the back of my throat and settled back into the couches. “I’ll do it when I figure out how,” I assured him, unsure how much of it was a lie.

He rolled his eyes. “Just give it back. Tell him you found it the other day, and it was broken or something so you wanted to fix it.”

“Something tells me Levi wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment,” Armin sighed, leaning his chin in one hand. “Try to get late shift again and replace it.”

I nodded. “No offense, Eren, but Armin’s plan sounds safer.”

Eren snorted, straightening up. “Face the consequences, Bodt. You did the crime, pay your time.”

He was right, of course. Eren had a way of being right often, but no one seemed to give him enough credit. Of course, I wasn’t going to acknowledge that he was right about me being a criminal. When he put it like that, I just felt more guilty.

I merely shrugged in response, and Eren let out an exasperated sigh. He and Armin continued their conversation, leaving me on the outskirts again. I glanced at my watch and silently counted down the seconds until they would leave and I’d be alone again.

Friday Pizza Night always ended like that.

 

“See you next Thursday,” Armin assured, hugging me as tight as his thin arms allowed.

I smiled and waved goodbye as he scurried down the steps to Eren’s mom’s car: his ride for the night. I figured she’d dropped them off earlier, and I waved to her as well, half in greeting and half in apology for not greeting her earlier. She grinned at me and then glared past me at Eren who was taking his sweet time behind me.

I turned back and smiled at him, attempting to fan myself with one hand. He was busy pulling his CD from the radio. “Your mom’s waiting,” I reminded him. It was more for my sake than hers, honestly—the heat was killing me, and I’d only been outside for a few moments.

He grimaced. “Yeah, I know,” he muttered. “I’ll be out in a second.”

I nodded, leaning back against the doorway, pulling at my collar. “Just remember what happened last time,” I teased.

He straightened up immediately, whipping around to stare at me in horror. “No, you don’t think she’ll do that again, do you? You almost got evicted.”

I laughed. “I did not almost get evicted, Eren. The neighbors were just a bit angry.”

He grimaced. “Yeah, well, I guess I should get going anyway—just in case.”

He shoved the CD case into his loose back pocket and hurried past me through the door. “See you on Monday, Marco,” he told me.

I started to wave goodbye, but I stopped when he paused on the top steps.

“Hey, um…” he murmured, rolling up his short sleeves into a tank top. Eren turned to me, pulling his CD out of the back of his shorts. “You want to keep it?”

I glanced at it for a moment, readying a sigh and a polite refusal, but he was shoving it into my hands before I could. “Just take it. I have another copy at home… It’s an apology for being an asshole earlier.” He sighed, curling my fingers over the top edge. “Um, S-Sweater Weather reminds me of you…”

He whipped around and scurried off the porch steps, headed for his mom’s car before I could reply. I tried to remember which lyrics would remind him of me—but the first ones that came to mind were a little more suggestive than I wanted to believe he meant.

I felt my face flush with heat and scolded myself for only remembering that part. I was sure that wasn’t what he’d meant, but just the thought of it made my stomach twist uncomfortably in my gut.

I slipped back inside with a heavy sigh, letting the door shut firmly behind me before sliding down it to the floor.

With them both gone, suddenly my house felt bigger than before. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Some kind of relief and disappointment swirled together in my chest, and I hunched over my bent knees in an attempt to push the feelings down.

“I’m too old for this,” I whispered into the empty silence of my house, looking around at the bright walls that suddenly did nothing to make the room more welcoming.

I didn’t know exactly what I was talking about, what exactly it was that I was too old for. I just knew that it felt petty, and I felt small, and I was five foot ten, with a job and a house. _I shouldn’t have to feel small_.

I glanced down at the floor, dirty wooden panels that creaked underneath the welcome mat when I shifted my weight on it.

The VHS was sitting beside me, but I wasn’t even surprised anymore. I reached towards it and pulled it into my lap, leaning my head back against the door. “Hi,” I whispered.

I didn’t look at it for a while, holding it against my thighs and staring up at the water-stained ceiling. I remembered what Eren had said about giving it back to Levi.

It wasn’t mine in the first place, honestly. And it was… more trouble than it was worth. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. It made it a little easier when I decided I had to give the VHS back to Levi. With a huff of a sigh, I lifted it back up to my face to study the dark surface.

There were no words written across the front anymore, just the shine of black plastic. I stared at it for what felt like a long time. It felt cold, and for a moment, I felt bad about shoving it in the freezer. I ran my thumb along the edge, took a deep breath.

Maybe I could watch it, just to tell Jean that I was going to give him back to Levi—or just to say hello. To apologize for making him mad, for ignoring him, for deciding to get rid of him…

But I couldn’t. I just closed my eyes tight and set the VHS back down on the floor. I couldn’t talk to him—I didn’t know what I’d say, didn’t know what _he’d_ say. What if he didn’t want to talk to me in the first place?

I scurried upstairs before I could talk myself out of it. I just needed a shower. I just needed to sleep. I just needed to stop thinking about it.

By the time I was curled up in bed, falling asleep, I’d convinced myself that I’d pushed all thoughts of the VHS far out of my head—I also knew what I sounded like when I was lying to myself.

 

_I don’t know why it’s so cold. There are goose bumps running all up and down my arms, and the hair at the back of my neck stands on end. But I’m still standing in the office, wandering over to the immaculate desk and running my fingers along the edge. Cold, hard steel—it almost burns my fingertips. It’s familiar, but different._ Levi _, I think, but the name holds no weight._

_“You said you’d like to talk?” I ask, my voice loud in the near silent room. There’s no other sound but the rustling of papers in chilled air, the soft rustle of my breath that leaks white smoke from my lips. “I don’t have much time for this.”_

_I’m impatient, I realize. I’m tapping my fingers, refusing to look at the person I’m supposedly speaking too. I’m aimlessly reading the titles of papers on the desk in front of me_

_ The Absence of a Victim _ _. It’s the title of one of the papers. The rest is written in Spanish. I’m not in the mood to translate it, except for one line, at the end of the page, half obscured by another paper. I slide it out of the way, so I can read that last sentence, written in hurried, scrawled handwriting, as if set as a last minute warning._

The Absence of a Victim—does not mean the absence of a crime.

_I look up, and my heart feels like it’s beating out of my chest. “Is that a camera?”_

_The words come from my mouth, but they aren’t mine. I’m not looking at anything but a wall, but I can imagine it, the sight of a camera, innocuous on top of a little table, beside a vase of dying flowers. I can feel the shock slide over me, the shock of a realization that makes my stomach begin to heave, that makes my chest feel tight._

_I trusted him. I trusted him, oh God, I trusted him, I don’t want to watch, get me out of here, please—why did I trust him—_

_I whip around, and the words are mine again. A hulking figure, dark plastic skin, a rough texture that descends upon me with steady, sure steps. I can’t escape, I’m too small, the door is locked, there’s no one here._

_I’m in the Blockbuster, I’m screaming for help._

_His hands lock around my arms and throw me onto the desk, and I squirm like a fish in a net, I can’t get out. He heaves himself over me, and I’m screaming and sobbing, and I can’t get loose—there’s no one to help me—help me—help me—HELP ME—_

_I’m choking, metallic tape wrapped around my throat, squeezing until I can’t breathe, just gasping out with my last breaths—HELP ME._

_No one can hear._

 

I shot awake with a silent scream coming out of my throat, scrabbling at an invisible weight around my neck. My heart was racing, too fast to pound, fast enough to hurt.

I don’t know how long I spent there, _writhing_ , but by the time I calmed down enough to look around and try to breathe, I felt numb, and my blankets were on the floor.

I lay there for what seemed like hours, panting into the pillow beside my head. I could hardly remember the dream—just the feeling of something wiry wrapped around my throat. I placed a hand against my Adam’s apple, swallowing and feeling it bob. My throat felt bruised, but I was pretty sure that was the effect of screaming for so long, not whatever happened in my dream.

Whatever happened in my dream… rippled black skin—no, more of a dark grey—plastic—

I buried my face into my pillow.

_Get out of my head_.

It wouldn’t.

I sat up, tried to shake my head of the thoughts, but when I looked down and saw the VHS tangled up in my sheets on the floor, I knew they weren’t going to go away.

I curled my legs to my chest and took a deep breath, contemplating the tape on the floor. There was no way it could’ve given me a nightmare, right? It was just a _VHS_ —but I knew I was just lying to myself, some vain effort to calm myself down. It was so much more than a VHS. It was as if it were sentient, and I knew that it wasn’t going to leave me alone unless I talked to it—talked to Jean.

“Fine,” I whispered.

I scooped the VHS off the floor and scurried out of the room, trying to recall where Eren had shoved the TV earlier. I had to heft it back up onto the table once I found it, had to plug in all the black and grey cables in the dark because I didn’t want to even bother with the lights… but to my surprise, I didn’t mind. The movement and effort of putting things in their right place was almost calming. At the very least, I didn’t have to think about anything else.

I flicked the TV on and then curled up beside it, squinting at the VHS in the dim blue light shining from the screen. I studied the surface, tried to reacquaint myself with the ridges of black plastic and forget the intimidating figure I could recall from my dream. When I flipped it in my hands, I noticed a strange shine on the corners that hadn’t been there before. I leaned in close and really looked at it, biting my lips as I made out the almost imperceptible shine of black sharpie over the dark plastic, words unsettling in their urgency: “Watch it” in one corner. “My favorite” in another section.

I shuddered at the words, and I wasn’t sure why. It was probably its way of begging me—maybe _his_ way of talking to me when I wouldn’t listen, of telling me that he liked me, wanted me to talk to him.

I shoved the VHS in and listened to the roll of the tape being read, reluctant to even turn around and face the screen.

“Marco?”

I took in a deep breath at the sound of his voice, smiled despite myself because in some small part of me, I’d kind of missed the thrill of newness his tone brought with it.

“Hey,” I croaked, throat tight. _I’m so pathetic; I’m supposed to be mad, not choked up._

“You… you okay?”

I sighed, ducked my head, and then shuffled around to face him again, curling my knees to my chest. “I’m fine,” I told him, careful not to reach up and rub at any lingering wetness around my eyes.

It was ridiculous, I felt ridiculous. Why was I even talking to him? His little VHS had been tormenting me all afternoon, and then the nightmare that I was almost positive had to do with the VHS—did I think he was separate from that?

But now that I could see him again, I _wanted_ to talk to him. Somehow, I’d missed him.

He squinted at me, and I took a moment to study his face again. The pull of thin eyebrows as they furrowed over sharp eyes. The glint of a silver piercing in blue light. Cracked lips in the form of a hesitant grimace, twisted fingers pulling his beanie off messy hair and twisting it around in their grasp.

“Hey, um…” My eyes flicked up from his hands to look at his face again. His gaze was focused far away from me, flicking for a brief moment to the window and then to the door and staying there. “Last time we talked, I, um… I’m sorry I yelled at you. And… and called you a shitwad.”

I blinked at him slowly, letting the words sink in. He seemed genuine, and his words were quiet—appealing to me as if he’d been afraid I wouldn’t talk to him again.

A tiny smile found its way to my face. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

He winced. “That’s the thing—you… _you_ didn’t make me angry.” He gritted his teeth and groaned, shoving his beanie over his head before flopping back onto the bed. “I was just angry. That… It happens sometimes. I get really mad for no reason, and I know I do, I just… can’t…”

My arms slowly released their vice grip on my shins the more he tried to talk. There was something about him that was… unbearably endearing. I forgave him already.

I shouldn’t have—I know that. I should’ve been more wary or something. What person in their right mind would ignore all of the creepy stuff that had already happened, all of the mystery surrounding the person of the past quite likely haunting their TV—maybe their entire house.

I didn’t care. Maybe I wasn’t in my right mind—maybe I hadn’t been in a long time.

“I forgive you,” I told him, interrupting his mini rant about anger management issues.

He stopped, staring at the ceiling for at least a good minute until he sat up to lock his eyes on me. I shifted under his intense stare, but I didn’t look away. “You do?” he asked.

I smiled at him. “Everyone has issues,” I told him. “ _I_ have issues. And obviously you feel bad about it, so… I forgive you.”

He bit his lower lip, chewed it thoughtfully, staring at me with eyes that seemed to look through me. He sighed finally. “I can’t guarantee I won’t snap at you all the time.”

I shrugged. “I can’t guarantee it’ll scare me away.”

He cracked a smile at that, a genuine one. I couldn’t help but grin back. “Fair enough,” he answered, adjusting his beanie on his head.

I honestly don’t remember how our conversation went the rest of the night. It was somewhere past midnight, and I was still exhausted from the ordeal that was Friday Pizza Night and a nightmare that still made my head spin to think about. Our back and forth felt surreal at that hour, more stream of consciousness than an actual exchange.

But we did manage to talk, for what at the least felt like hours, about trivial things. Videogames, the entire plot of Harry Potter, a description of my favorite Bastille song, Skulls.

“Hey, Marco,” he murmured after a while.

I struggled to keep my eyes open and wondered how late it was before I hummed questioningly at him. He squinted at me. I couldn’t fathom how he didn’t look tired at all. “You should get to sleep,” he advised. “It’s late.”

I told him no, that I wasn’t tired. Some part of me was afraid of the nightmare, afraid that it would follow me when I fell asleep again. And he rolled his eyes and kept talking, about trivial things. Somehow, his voice became softer and softer, quieter and quieter until it was just a hum in the back of my mind.

I don’t remember exactly when I fell asleep, and I don’t remember turning off the TV either. But somewhere between his voice describing the many nuances of Radiohead’s “sound” and the cold, rough press of the wooden floor against my cheek, my eyes drifted shut and my mind wandered.

No more nightmares. I only dreamt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm kind of tagging as I go along, and I might still change some things or add some things, bear with me. (That includes the summary, this is taking a slightly different direction than I originally thought, so...)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please leave comments, they are my life blood.


	5. Saturday Mornings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marco talks to Jean and wishes they could talk forever.

“So,” Jean started, and I leaned through the kitchen doorway to look at him. “Lemme just get this straight: you’re going to do ‘chores’ and shit, and I’m going to just keep you company?”

I smiled. “Ask questions,” I corrected. “I know you’re curious about ‘my time period,’ so just, whatever you’re curious about, just ask.”

He nodded. I grinned and then sank back into the kitchen, turning my attention back to the bacon I had cooking. Half awake a few minutes before, I’d turned on the TV and almost cooked enough bacon for two people before I remembered that Jean couldn’t exactly eat anything through the screen.

“Then, what’s up with Blockbuster these days?” Jean called.

I snorted. “Bankrupt, honestly,” I told him. “Netflix and Redbox have them beaten out.”

“The hell are they?”

I blinked at the food sizzling in front of me as I realized that, yeah, there was no way he could know what Netflix or Redbox was. “Oh, they’re um, this… Well, Redbox is basically what it sounds like. It’s a big red box that spits out movies for money, kind of like a vending machine. And you turn the movies back into the box when you’re done with them.”

“That sounds…” He was silent for a moment, and I scooped my bacon onto a plate before it burned. It wasn’t much, but it would tide me over until lunch, at least. “Absolutely surreal,” Jean finally finished, and I snorted at him.

“Well, wait till you hear about Netflix,” I laughed, scurrying back into the living room. “It used to be like, you would order a movie and they’d deliver it to you in the mail for rent, and then you’d send it back when you were done with it. But nowadays, it’s basically TV. You buy an account and pay monthly for it, and you can watch pretty much anything you want.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Even porn?”

I gasped, throwing an affronted hand to my chest. “Like TV shows, perv,” I snapped in response, but the grin on my face betrayed my amusement. He grinned back.

“So, that sounds exactly like cable,” he sighed, plopping heavily back onto his bed. “What’s the difference?” He smirked. “Other than the lack of porn?”

I settled onto the couch, already chewing thoughtfully on a piece of bacon. “Well, for one, you can pause the video—“

“Wait, wait, you can pause the TV?”

I smiled. “Yeah, and you can rewind if you want—and you don’t have to worry about missing an episode because it’s all there—“

“And how did this beat out Blockbuster anyway?”

I rolled my eyes and leaned back. “Blockbuster you have to go out of your way for. People are too lazy to walk all the way to a store for a DVD—“

“DVD?”

I blinked at him confusedly. “Oh, um… You know, they’re like CDs, but they have movies in them?”

He squinted at me. “You’re telling me people use CDs instead of VHS?”

I cringed a bit at the usage of CD instead of DVD, but ultimately I shrugged and gestured towards him with a piece of bacon. “Well, you VHSs are pretty hard to come by these days, so I’d say so. The world’s starting to embrace Blu-ray now, though—“

“Blu-ray? That’s some alien sounding shit.”

I suppressed a snicker with a bite of food, grinning at him around it. “It _feels_ like some alien sounding stuff,” I replied. “It’s like a DVD, but it’s smaller, right? And then, like, you can go on the special features menu—that’s like, you know, games or behind-the-scenes stuff— _while the movie is playing._ I don’t have a Blu-ray because like, wow, expensive, but that’s what I know, at least.”

“That’s just weird.” He grimaced. “Who the hell put ‘behind-the-scenes’ stuff on movies? What’s that even for? And games? Who’s idea was that?”

I shrugged. “Games for the kids, behind-the-scenes stuff for the movie buffs and fans.” I smiled sheepishly, hiding it behind a piece of bacon. “I actually, um, really love the behind-the-scenes. Like, how they make the set and how the actors get in character? Love it.”

He rolled his eyes but still smiled at me. “Lame,” he sighed. “That totally kills the magic.”

I squinted at him, chewing the end of one of the last pieces of bacon and wishing I could stretch it out, so I didn’t have to get up and start cleaning. “Didn’t peg you as the kind to believe in movie magic.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, smirking dangerously. “What, you saying I have no imagination?”

I spluttered out a laugh, shaking my head wildly at him. “Oh, my gosh, no, I didn’t say that!”

He shrugged. “I don’t know—movies are like a whole other world. It’s like a book, and God knows I hated my English teacher trying to make books like work. Like, who the hell cares _how_ they made the book, I sure as hell don’t. Let it be magic, dumbass.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Yeah, I never really understood English either. I guess I’m just more into the plot than the structure.”

He waved his hand around in some wild gesture. “Exactly! Exactly. I don’t get English teachers, dude.”

I shrugged, frowned at my last piece of bacon, and then decidedly stuffed it in. “I don’t think they’ve changed much in the past fifteen years, so,” I muttered around it as I rose to my feet.

“Gonna start cleaning now?” he asked.

I waved at him as I headed for the kitchen. “Washing dishes first,” I told him. “Then I head up to my room and clean there, then I wash my clothes—I’ll have to turn you up for that, my washer is so _loud_ —and then it’s just sweeping.“

“Sounds like a routine,” he sighed.

“It is, but routines are nice,” I answered. “Boring, sure, I guess. But you always know what you’re doing. Even if you screw up a step, you just move onto the next one.”

“Yeah, but key emphasis on boring, am I right?” he muttered.

I shrugged, knowing he couldn’t see me in the kitchen from the living room. “You get used to that,” I replied, but my voice was quiet.

“Anyway, you never finished talking about Harry Potter last night,” he called.

I smirked. “Because _someone_ interrupted me.” I hummed as I flicked on the sink, setting to work cleaning the frying pan I’d used that morning. “Where did we leave off?” I asked.

“Harry and Hermione are at Hagrid’s house, saving Buckbeak,” he answered, eagerly, almost immediately.

I smiled to myself at the grin in his voice. I couldn’t say I was much of a storyteller—and I could only remember the movies since it had been so long since I’d read the books—but he was already in love with the world. He’d asked me which my favorite teacher and my favorite house and my favorite book and my favorite of the main trio. He’d been reluctant to share any of his, claiming not to know enough to choose yet. I figured he was just shy because his choices were different.

“Okay, well, remember when, earlier, Harry got hit in the back of the head with a rock, and that’s how he noticed the people coming? So he and the others could hide?”

He hummed, thinking and then sighed, “Honestly, no.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, it happened,” I reminded him. “And guess who threw that mysterious rock?”

“Who?”

“Hermione Granger.”

“The one… from the future?”

I laughed at the questioning tone of his voice. “Yes, Jean, the one from the future.”

“You’re pulling my leg—that’s ridic!”

I only laughed harder, and as I continued to shift through the dirty dishes, soaking them in the hot, soapy water, I regaled Jean with tales of Quidditch matches gone awry, of Dark Lords revived, of friends lost (“You’re kidding me, holy shit, they kill off the _owl_?”), and of battles won.

He was completely captivated the second time around—possibly due to the fact that I wasn’t half-asleep the second time. By the time I’d finished telling him every event of the last movies, I’d already finished the dishes and was curled up on the couch again, grinning at the expressions on his face.

“Okay, that was a whirlwind,” he huffed, flopping onto his back. “I can’t believe I never heard of it.”

I shrugged. “I guess it only became popular in the 2000s.” I squinted at him, slowly uncurling from the couch, knowing I had to get to cleaning my room soon. “What, um… What was your Harry Potter back then?” I asked softly. “I-I mean, you know, what was the popular book in the nineties, I guess?”

He sat up a little to cock an eyebrow at me. “I don’t know. Goosebumps?”

I grinned at him. “I remember those books! The ones with all the weird horror stories, right?”

He smiled slowly, and I felt my whole face flush red at the sight. The way he looked then, so sincere, with the blue light outside turning gold… I almost wanted to shrink into the couch and disappear.

“Yeah,” he told me. “I loved those books when I was younger.”

I managed to smile back at him, but when he squinted at me I popped off the couch and whipped around. “S-so, I should get around to cleaning my room now.”

“Gotcha. Where’s your room?” he asked, a heave in his voice. When I glanced at him, he was hefting himself off the bed, walking towards the front of the room he was in.

For a moment, I wondered what he was looking at me through. A TV? A mirror? A camera?

I shook the thought and smiled again at him, pointing upstairs. “Up there,” I explained. “Um, now that I think about it, I might not be able to hear you from up there…”

He shrugged. “Turn up the volume.”

I blinked at him in surprise. So nonchalant, as if he’d already accepted that he was in a TV. Had he? Honestly, some parts of me still hadn’t. “Oh.” I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll work.”

I stepped over and crouched in front of the TV. Standing at the front of the room, his face took up most of the screen, and I hadn’t realized how close he seemed to be. My eyes constantly flicked towards him as I clicked the volume up, but he wasn’t facing me. His face was turned towards the door in his room, eyebrows furrowed deep over his eyes. They were a strange tawny/gold. I hadn’t noticed that before. It was kind of mesmerizing.

And from so close, I had a chance to study the piercing in his eyebrow that had always fascinated me. It was simple, a silver bar with a ball on each end, slid straight through the skin. It must’ve hurt, I couldn’t help but think. But something told me he wasn’t the kind to think about how much something would hurt—if he wanted it, he’d get it, do it, take it.

“You’re staring at me,” he mumbled suddenly.

I breathed in sharply through my nose, partly from the shock of him noticing and partly from the sheer volume of his voice. I hurriedly flicked the volume down and ignored the blush on my cheeks as I tried to stutter out an excuse. “U-uh, um, I just—y-your—the, um—the piercing in your e-eyebrow, I was just…”

His eyes slid over to me, his expression relaxing as his thin lips spread into a satisfied smirk. “Like what you see?”

I bit my lip hard and looked pointedly away. “I-I was just wondering where you got it…”

He paused, his face falling for a split second—maybe I wouldn’t have even noticed it if I didn’t know what that expression looked like on my own face. He turned his gaze away from me again, and although the smirk returned, there was a hardness in his golden eyes. He put his chin in his hand, hunching over heavily, and I figured his elbow must’ve been resting on something, a table maybe.

“Hitch,” he almost whispered. I might not have heard it if I hadn’t turned up the volume.

I squinted at him. “Hitch?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Friend. Well…” He sighed. “More than that, I guess. I don’t… remember all that…” He grimaced and shook his head. “Her name was Hitch. She bought this thing for me.”

He pulled gently at his piercing, and then pushed away from the screen, plopping down on his bed. “Anyway, don’t you have cleaning to do?”

I winced at the sharpness in his tone, but I could tell he had something on his mind. I hated to think that I’d been the one to put any bad thoughts in there. I liked it better when he smiled…

I pushed myself to my feet. “Yeah, I’ll get going.” I paused, nervously lacing my fingers before pointing at him. “Um, if you want to know anything, just… ask. Kay?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.”

My stomach felt warm with affection. Those were the words, the familiar ones that I’d been missing. It didn’t even bother me how dismissive they were. I turned to hop up the stairs with a grin on my face.

There honestly wasn’t much of a mess in my room, nothing more but a few clothes and sweeping to do, but it always bothered me if I put it off for too long. Part of me wanted to put it off, just to hang out with Jean longer, but I knew better than to ignore my chores.

I pulled out the broom I kept in my closet as well as the hamper I always seemed to forget existed until Saturday rolled around. By the time I wrestled them out, Jean seemed to have gotten over whatever he’d been thinking about.

“So, I was wondering about that iPhone thing you were talking about the other day.” His voice was loud, if a bit muffled from its path all the way upstairs.

I smiled at the sound of it. “What do you want to know about them?” I called.

“Well, what the hell they are would be a nice start.”

I smiled to myself, picking jeans off the floor and making sure they weren’t inside out anymore. “They’re phones, Jean. But, um… Well, they have bigger screens, and you can control them with your fingers—touch screens.”

“Like those things in Star Trek?”

I laughed almost disbelievingly. I hadn’t pegged Jean as a Star Trek kind of guy. “Exactly like those things in Star Trek,” I confirmed. “Except you use them to text or call people. And you can play games on there, too.”

“You play videogames on your phone?”

I snorted. “Well, _I_ don’t. My phone’s too old to have apps like that.”

“Apps?”

“Applications. They’re games, but I mean, there are more practical ones too. Like a flashlight or one for your email.”

“So you like… you stick them onto your phone or something?”

I tried not to snort at the utter confusion in his tone. Of course he wouldn’t know—but it was sort of surreal explaining something so simple to him. “No, they’re _in_ your phone,” I answered back, trying to think from his perspective. It probably sounded beyond ridiculous. “It’s like… channels. On TV? Except you get different channels on your phone. And on one you can check your email and on another you can play a game, so on, so forth.”

“Okay…” he murmured. “Yeah, okay, that makes sense, I guess.”

He went silent for a moment, and I continued picking up clothes. There weren’t too many, so it wasn’t long before I was setting my hamper aside to frown at the mess of my blankets I’d made the night before. It was just one thin blanket because of the summer heat, but it was big and all over the place. I wasn’t looking forward to folding it back up.

I got to work, though, searching for the corners. Jean stayed silent, probably wondering what else to ask. I wondered how much had really changed for him to ask about. So many new stories had been told since 1998, and technology had advanced, and wars had started, and—wow, he didn’t even know what 9/11 was, or that Obama was president. And there were so many things that had happened outside of the US that he wouldn’t know either.

I finally found the corners and tried to shake my head of the realization of how far apart we really were. How much a difference of fifteen years really meant.

Instead I focused on the dull repetition of folding my blanket over itself, listening to the air in hopes of hearing Jean’s next question. The more I folded the blanket, however, the more I noticed something heavy hanging inside of it. I squinted and lifted the blanket. There was a dark, rectangular shape hidden within the folds, and just the sight of it made my heart begin to race.

Why wasn’t Jean talking? Why was this thing in my blanket? The… The VHS…

I dropped the blanket on my bed and hurriedly unfolded it to reveal—just my book. Mom’s book.

I let out a sigh of relief, but it was cut short as my eyes flashed past the title. I remembered it vaguely, in a cold room, amidst shuffled papers…

My hands tightened around the book as broken memories from my dream came back to me in pieces. My breath like smoke in the air. Steel against my fingertips.

I flipped the book over to hide those words from me, The Absence of a Victim, but it was worse on the back cover. At the bottom of the cover, at the end of the summary, were the words “does not mean the absence of a crime.”

I gasped in surprise, tossing the book away from me. “Oh, my gosh!” My feet tangled in the blanket I’d unfolded, and I stumbled, tipping over and hitting the floor hard. “Ow!”

“Marco?” Jean called. “Marco, are you okay?”

I flopped back onto the floor and took a deep breath. Why had that freaked me out so much? They were just words, and if anything it explained those little pieces from my dream. Just things I’d heard, just words I’d read.

I winced as I sat back up. Jean was still calling hesitantly up towards me. “I’m fine,” I called back down. “I just tripped.”

“Oh.” His voice softened. “Good.”

He sounded relieved, and I let myself smile at that for a moment before I decided that I’d had enough of cleaning my room. I’d picked up all of my clothes after all, and that was all I needed to start the laundry. And then I could skip back downstairs and just talk to Jean.

I had a feeling that the nightmares wouldn’t come back if I kept talking to Jean.

“So, I’m done in here,” I called downstairs to him. “I’m just going to start the laundry now!”

“Sounds good!”

I hefted up the basket and squinted suspiciously down at the book one more time before deciding to just forget about it and move on. It was just a dream, after all.

In a little room beside the bathroom—honestly more of a closet than a room—there was a stacked washer and dryer, and I squeezed the basket and myself inside to access them. Shirts first, pants second, boxers last. Sometimes having a work uniform was more than worth it. There was no need to separate colors because they were all the same.

I tossed shirts in and, gritting my teeth in preparation, turned the washer on. The sound wasn’t instantaneous, but the low rumbling that started up promised to build before long. I stumbled over the basket in a rush to get out before the washer lived up to its promise.

“Welcome back,” Jean called once I made it down the stairs.

The washer was already beginning its cycle, the screams shaking the supports of the house as it did every week. I hardly even cringed. Jean looked more than a little unnerved. “Why is the house shaking?”

I chuckled, skipping past him to the kitchen where I’d left the other broom. Sweeping the house was next, and that meant I could talk to Jean more. There was a skip in my step as I moved back into the living room. “That’s the washing machine. Don’t worry—the ceiling’s not going to collapse or something.”

He didn’t look so convinced. “Yeah, whatever,” he sighed, settling back down onto his bed. “Anyway, so I was thinking about that song you were talking about earlier.”

I leaned on my broom, smiling at him. “You mean the one by Bastille?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Yeah, sure, that one. I wanna listen to it.”

I blinked at him stupidly for a moment. “You… you wanna listen to it?”

“That’s what I said.”

My stomach was doing flips. He actually wanted to listen to my music? I was used to listening to Eren’s music, never sharing my own. _This is what friends do_ , I remembered.

I grinned. “Yeah. Yeah, okay! I have a bunch of CDs we can listen to together,” I said, straightening out and tossing the broom on the couch. “I’ll be right back!”

It occurred to me only once I was halfway up the stairs that he probably didn’t want to listen to more than just that one song—but if I could do it for Eren, then Jean could do it for me.

All of my CDs were thrown haphazardly into the drawer of my bedside table, a pile of music that I hadn’t listened to in what felt like years but was really only months. I dug out a few. The Bastille CD, old mix tapes from when I was younger, bands I hardly remembered save for the three-dollar price tags on their cases.

 _Bastille first_ , I reminded myself as I made my way back downstairs. _And then the others_.

“That’s a lot of CDs,” he whistled when I set them all down on the couch.

“I thought maybe I could show you some more music from the future,” I murmured, flashing him a shy smile.

He narrowed his eyes at me but smiled nonetheless. “I’m up for it.”

I grinned at him before flicking in the CD and over to the song I’d described the night before, “Skulls.” I had a feeling he wouldn’t like it so much, but he’d asked to hear my music, so.

In the few seconds before the song started, I wrapped my hand around the handle of the broom and started to sweep. I grinned at the opening notes of the song, struggling not to sing along so that Jean could get an idea of the song without me in it first.

Jean seemed to be in deep concentration, eyes closed and brow furrowed, focusing on each note as they came.

“I came here for sanctuary,” crooned my radio, “away from the winds and the sounds of the city.”

I couldn’t help at least humming along as I set about cleaning the dust from the wooden floorboards, my eyes flicking every now and again to Jean’s screwed up face.

It was a few seconds before he finally squinted his eyes open and cocked an eyebrow at me. “Future music is lame,” he muttered.

Despite my disappointment, my first reaction was to stick my tongue out at him instead of frowning. “Maybe it’s 90s music that’s lame,” I teased, and I smiled wide at him when he laughed in response.

“Hey, maybe it is,” he answered, flopping back on his bed. “So which song next?”

I was almost surprised by how easily he accepted my jab, but from where I stood, there was no denying that he was grinning at me and that, somehow, the light streaming from his window was pure gold like sunlight instead of its usual night blue.

“Well,” I answered, tapping my chin as I studied the CDs on the table, “I like to dance to the music on this one…”

I felt my face flush red. Oh, my gosh, why had I said that? He was going to ask me to dance for him or something; I was such a terrible dancer—

“Dancing, huh?” he snickered. “Maybe you should show me some of those modern moves.”

My heart raced, and I forced a laugh at him. “W-what, no, I’m—I’m really not—that’s really not the—“

He sat up and shot me a puppy dog face, although honestly it looked more constipated than adorable. “Come on,” he whined. He grinned and broke his constipated puppy façade. “You can’t be all that bad.”

The sincerity in his expression made my face flush even warmer, and I twirled the broom in my hands. “W-well, um…” I swallowed and shrugged. “You should dance too then.”

He snorted. “Ah, no, you don’t want to see me dance.”

I huffed at him, trying to hide my grin and knowing I was failing. “Come on, you can’t be all that bad,” I teased.

His face took on an affronted expression, but he laughed through it, rising to his feet. “All right, all right, fine. B-but I—like I mean, I _really_ don’t know how to dance. Like at all. So, like, when I completely make a dumbass of myself, you can’t laugh too hard at me.”

I struggled not to laugh right then and there, but the overly serious expression on his face made it hard. “Okay, fine, but only if you dance with me.”

He smirked at me. “That can be arranged.” His eyes seemed unfocused for a moment and he squinted. “Well, sort of, I guess. Considering…”

I smiled at him. “That’s okay, that doesn’t mean we can’t dance,” I replied, leaning over to pluck the CD from the table. “Now, fair warning, I don’t actually…” I bit my lip around a smile as I glanced back up at him. “I don’t actually remember all of the songs on this CD, so…”

He shrugged. “Sounds just like my tapes at home,” he replied.

As I clicked the CD in, I prayed it wouldn’t play something embarrassing. The case said “For Mina,” and I remembered her erratic music tastes from when I’d made the CD for her. One minute it was R&B, the next it was dubstep, the next it was folk music—if I remembered correctly, this one was made for her birthday party. So dance music then.

I took in a sharp breath as I heard the beginning strings of a song so familiar, it almost felt nostalgic. I grinned over at Jean. “You don’t mind if I sing along?” I asked.

His eyebrows shot up. “No, that’s fine.”

I waved for him to stand as Kanye West’s voice popped out of the radio. He frowned, rising nervously to his feet. “What the fuck is this?”

I smiled. “It’s called American Boy, it was my friend’s favorite.”

Estelle started to sing, and I sang along. “Take me on a trip, I’d like to go someday!”

Almost without my permission, my hips started to sway to the music, the broom in my hands became a dance partner, and with a flick of my wrist, I’d turned up the music louder, enough to be heard clearly over the washing machine that still shook the foundations of the house. “He said: hey sister, it’s really, really nice to meet you!”

Jean had that constipated look on his face again, but the more I sang, the more he smiled. I shuffled along the floor, spinning with my broom as Estelle sang about the sights of America and the American boy she couldn’t look away from. I saw him tapping his toes in response to the music, and I realized that I couldn’t stop grinning.

When was the last time I’d danced? I couldn’t remember, but it honestly didn’t matter. “Don’t like his baggy jeans, but I’m-a like what’s underneath them,” I sang, and I didn’t even think before sending him a wink that made his jaw drop.

“I should’ve asked you to dance sooner,” he laughed.

I stuck my tongue out at him through my teeth. “You should dance too, come on.”

He shook his head, waving me off. “I’ll let you do the dancing until I find something I can figure out how to move to.”

I rolled my eyes, spinning my broom one more time and jerking my hips back and forth as I swept along. My voice fell down to humming, and I focused on sweeping for a while, feeling just a bit self-conscious about Jean just watching me. It wasn’t awkward per se, but I couldn’t help but wish he wasn’t in a TV, so that we could dance together. I could tell he didn’t exactly like the song, but that had nothing to do with dancing anyway.

“Would you be my love, my love?” I murmured along to the radio.

“You’re actually pretty good,” he said, and I whipped around to stare at him.

“What? N-no, I’m terrible, what’re you talking about,” I laughed.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Dude, trust me, I know what I’m saying.”

I shook my head at him. “You’re just being nice,” I answered softly, looking intently down at the swirls of my broom on the floor.

“Maybe.” He went quiet for a second, staring at the broom twirling in my hands as well. “Maybe it’s to make up for being an asshole earlier.”

I rolled my eyes and smiled. “You really don’t need to apologize for that,” I reminded him.

“Maybe I feel like it.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could, the sound of a new song floating through the radio speakers caught my ears. My head snapped around to stare at the radio. “Oh, my gosh, I love this song!” I gasped.

He squinted at me. “What is she saying?”

I grinned at him. Of course he wouldn’t know, it was in Spanish. I leaned over to restart the song, and as Shakira began to sing, I followed along.

My pronunciation was rusty, and I couldn’t sing as fast as her, but the words came easily to me, the memories of parties and spinning and hips flowing back to me just as smoothly as the song through the radio.

“ _Era ese sabor en tu piel_ ,” I sang, flowing along with the song. My broom became a prop instead of a cleaning tool, spinning as I spun, hugging against my hips as I swung them.

“Holy shit, you can sing along to this?”

I just grinned at him, singing along even as the words sped up. I closed my eyes, let myself move. Any of the shyness I was feeling before melted away. “Come on,” I called, breaking out of the lyrics just for a moment to hold my hand out to Jean and wiggle my fingers at him. “Dance along?”

He looked almost frightened. “You’re pulling my leg; you think I can dance to this?”

I pursed my lips at him. “ _Gringo_ ,” I concluded, squinting teasingly at him.

“What’d you call me?”

“A skinny white boy,” I replied, and the scandalous gasp he let out made me laugh. “It’s okay, Spanish music can be hard for some people.”

He glared at me, a grin on his face. “Maybe you should teach me.”

“After this song,” I answered, closing my eyes again and joining back into the lyrics.

I’d been swaying my hips the whole time we’d talked, but now that I wasn’t talking anymore, the way I moved felt more natural, more deliberate. My hand in my hair, my mind on my memories, my body moving along to the pop of drums and the dreamy flow of Shakira’s voice.

“ _Nunca me sentí tan fuera de lugar_ ,” I crooned.

I danced harder as the music swelled to its high point, and when it came back down and flowed to an easy stop, I stopped too, the memories dispersing and my chest heaving as I panted. Jean was silent for a moment, and then he was practically breaking his hands clapping. I grinned breathlessly at him. “Thank you! Thank you!” I laughed, bowing exaggeratedly at him.

He whistled. “And you said you couldn’t dance,” he teased.

I set my broom down, my grin turning shy. “Well, I’m not really the best, you know?”

“Pfft.” He waved his hand dismissively at me. “Dude, who the fuck cares about anyone else?”

I shrugged. The song that was beginning to replace Shakira’s wasn’t one I recognized, so I popped the CD out and smiled at Jean. “Well, if you think I’m such a good dancer, why don’t you let me teach you a few steps?”

He shrugged. “Who would I be to turn down the master?”

I giggled in response. “Okay, I’m not really that good at salsa dancing, but my dad taught me a few steps, and I’ve got the perfect CD too!” I laughed, clapping my hands together. “Give me a second!”

I didn’t exactly give him any time to protest of course, racing upstairs again and back towards my room. I knew exactly which CD I needed, and exactly where it was: my parents’ box.

I didn’t think about it as I hurried over and started to dig through it, but as my hands curled around the CD case, a wave of sadness fell over me. It had been my mother’s, a present from my dad years ago, because Marc Anthony was her favorite. I felt almost sick to my stomach. I hadn’t listened to any of their CDs, had barely touched their things in years, nothing more than a book and his wallet. Loving kisses pressed to the surface of a box I hardly ever opened—and I’d definitely never shared any of it with someone else.

“Hey, Marco, you okay up there?” Jean called up to me.

I took a deep breath through my nose and thought about it. Maybe it was time. We were having so much fun, and I didn’t really have any other salsa music, and… And I wanted to. I wanted to share it all so _badly_.

I smiled at the sight of Marc Anthony’s Chihuahua face (as my dad had always described it) and hurried out of the room, CD in hand.

Jean raised his eyebrow at me as I skidded to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. “Found it,” I announced, stepping over to the radio and my abandoned broom. “Have you ever heard of Marc Anthony?”

He quirked his eyebrows at me. “Sounds Spanish.”

“ _Puertoriqueño_ ” I corrected, making sure to roll my R’s, the way my mom had taught me. I wasn’t the best Spanish speaker, but I liked the way his lips twisted into an impressed little smile. “Puerto Rican,” I translated softly, popping the CD into the radio and trying to remember which song I wanted. Something to dance to but slow enough for him to hear the words.

“What about you?” he asked.

I squinted at him, flicking past a few songs to find the one I wanted. “What do you think I am?” I tested teasingly.

He groaned, but there was a grin in his voice. “Well, from the Marco, I’m getting Spanish vibes, but with a last name like Bodt—and you’re pretty tan, but then you’re in the middle of summer—“ He flipped his hand around at me. “And then all those freckles are definitely throwing me off.”

I scrunched my nose up at him. “Freckles from my dad, who also happens to be half-Belgian. Hence the Bodt,” I explained. I smiled at him, finally finding the song I’d been looking for. “He’s also half-Columbian. And my mom…” I turned up the volume as loud as I dared, raising my voice to speak over it, “Is full-blooded Puerto Rican.”

“Oh, so you’ve got a little bit of everything, huh?”

I shrugged. “So, do you like this song?” I murmured, gesturing to the radio.

He sighed, tapping his chin. “It’s bearable. To be honest, I liked the chick’s voice better?”

“Shakira?” I asked.

He laughed. “Whatever her name is.”

I tutted at him. “Shakira is not whatever—but I’ll let it slide, seeing that you’re not exactly up to date with modern times.”

“Oh, how gracious.”

“Now, honestly, do you like the song?” I asked, lacing my fingers together nervously. I could find another song if he wanted, but this one was the one that my own father had taught me to dance to—I knew it best, and it was also closer to my heart than the others on the disc.

He rolled his eyes at me, smiling wide. “Yeah, yeah. I like it, okay?”

I grinned. “Awesome! Because you’re going to learn how to dance to it.”

“How are you supposed to teach me through a screen?” he asked, leaning closer towards me and quirking his eyebrows in questioning.

I shook a finger at him. “I have my ways. Now, let’s get you positioned right first.”

I brought my feet together. “It’s easier than you think, don’t worry. Just put your feet together and lift your arms up like this,” I instructed, holding my arms up to my chest, and holding out my hands as if I were driving.

When I looked up at him, I was surprised to see him actually trying to copy me. “A little higher with the arms,” I told him, and he obeyed, his twisted fingers wiggling.

He grinned at me. “This is hella easy,” he laughed.

I bit my lip around a grin myself, and then reached out to restart the song. “Okay, just watch my feet.”

The song began with a burst of horns, the frantic beat of a piano, and slowly more instruments blended in. I knew I was off beat when I started to dance, but I was teaching him steps, not technique anyway.

One foot forward, step with the other, back together. I repeated the movement backwards, one step back, step with the other, back together. I tried not to rock my hips too much, to make sure he could easily see the steps. “It’s pretty easy, see? Of course, this is just a simple step anyway, not too complicated—it can get worse—“

“How the fuck did you make that look so smooth?” he whined.

I glanced back up at him and had to choke back the laugh bubbling in my throat. His movements were stiff, his arms locked at his sides as if he were a football receiver or about to take off on a jetpack. And his face was scrunched up with the most frustrated concentration I’d ever seen.

“I-I…” I threw a hand over my mouth to hide as much of the laughter as I could. “You—it’s not—you’re overthinking it,” I snickered. I waved my hand at him. “Don’t look at your feet, okay? And if you miss a step, it’s not the end of the world.”

He grumbled at me, but listened to my instructions. “Loosen your shoulders,” I told him, and he did. “You don’t have to sway your hips, but move with your whole body, okay?” So he did. “Don’t look at your feet!” But he did.

I squinted at him and clicked the button to restart the song again. He glanced up at me. “Watch me this time, okay?” I asked. “I’m going to put it all together.”

I waited for the right moment to step in, keeping my stance until the song hit the beat I needed. And then, slowly at first and then faster, I slipped into the dance, much less wild than I had with Shakira. My hips moved me into every step, a rhythm that flowed through my body, up through my chest and out to my arms. Forward, in place, together, backward, in place, together—easy.

I looked up at Jean, but he’d stopped dancing entirely, wide eyes trained on me. I felt my face flush with heat and slowed down a bit. “Y-you should try it now,” I mumbled.

His face went red, and he stammered as he looked back up at me. “Look, maybe we should just accept that I’m bad at this and move on?”

I shook my head, face falling. “Jean, no, you’re really not bad, I swear!” I stopped dancing entirely, broke my stance to hold my hands out to him. “Look, you don’t even need to follow the moves, just listen to rhythm.” I wiggled my fingers. “Come on, dance with me.”

He broke his stance too, narrowing his eyes at my outstretched hands. “Marco…” For a moment, that was all he did, glaring at me as if I were crazy. And then finally, he sighed and held out his hands too, as if he were going to take mine. “Fine, I’ll dance with you, you nerd,” he muttered.

I grinned and moved one hand back. He moved his corresponding hand forward, smirking at me. We weren’t touching, but we might as well have been. With every step forward, he stepped back. I started off leading, dictating which movements we would make, which way we would step. But after a few steps, he started to lead, his hands tightening as if squeezing around mine.

I couldn’t help but laugh at his assertiveness, but he laughed along with me, and even though he was awkward and lanky, when he moved his hips, my heart fluttered. I hadn’t danced like this in a long time—or danced at all. And sure, finding my rhythm to American Boy or letting loose to Shakira was nice—freeing.

This was better. No, we weren’t actually standing beside each other, we weren’t really holding hands, we weren’t in each other’s space at all, not physically. But I felt closer to him than I’d felt to anyone in a while.

“ _En_ ,” I murmured, “ _mi alma está el beso que pudo ser_.”

With that last line, the song faded out, and we were both left in place, breathing a little hard, grinning at each other across the living room. “See?” I asked. “You really are good at this.”

He rolled his eyes. “Marco Bodt, you’re a compulsive liar,” he accused.

I pouted at him, trying to hide my smile. “You’re a compulsive pessimist,” I answered simply.

He laughed in response, and I let my smile shine through. “Yeah, yeah, now are you done with all this cleaning bullshit?”

I glanced down at the broom I’d abandoned. I hadn’t gotten much of anything done. My room upstairs was still pretty messy; I hadn’t swept the floor at all. At least the laundry was going, and the dishes were done. I sighed and shrugged. “I guess so,” I told him, smiling.

“Then sit your ass down and talk to me.”

I hid a laugh behind my hand before flicking the CD out of the radio. “Mood music?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, Bodt.”

It wasn’t hard to choose a CD from the plethora scattered over the couch. I carefully set down my mother’s CD and replaced it with one that read “Sappy Love Songs” across the front. Not too loud, not for dancing. Perfect.

I stretched out along the couch, carefully putting CDs on the floor and out of my way so I could lay down. “What else do you want to talk about?” I asked.

“Where do you live?”

I hummed, turning onto my side. “Well, when I was younger, I lived in this little town called Jinae—“

“Jinae?” He perked up at the words, his lips spreading into a grin. “I’ve heard of Jinae! Did you know the Rals?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

He frowned at that. “Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense…”

I frowned and glanced away from him, curling my legs up to my chest. “Sorry. The time difference is kind of bigger than it seems, huh?” I murmured.

He didn’t answer. “Then where do you live now?”

I sighed. “Here,” I replied. I squinted at him and attempted a smile, but it felt halfhearted on my face. “I’ll tell you when you tell me where you live.”

He smirked. “I’ll tell you when you guess it.”

“We should make a game of it,” I sighed, stretching my legs again for a moment. “I could guess something about you, and you could guess something about me.”

I glanced at him and blinked in surprise at the glint in his eyes. “I despise guessing games,” he replied.

I blinked at him stupidly for a moment before finally a smile twisted across my face. I bit my lip to keep from laughing, but I couldn’t help it. “Did—did you just quote The Lion King, oh, my gosh!”

He laughed along with me. “Glad to know that’s still a thing!”

I snickered into my palm. “The Lion King will always be a thing,” I managed before sitting up a bit to look at him seriously. “Really though, how about it? I know you don’t particularly like giving straight answers, so?”

He narrowed his eyes contemplatively at me. “Yeah, whatever. Guess away.”

I pursed my lips at him. “You’re French.”

He cracked a smile at that. “Half-right,” he commended with a polite clap.

A little swell of pride warmed my chest as I settled a little more into the couch. “I win.”

He snorted. “That was one round, loser. My turn: you are totally a goody-two-shoes.”

I batted my lashes at him. “Whatever gave you that impression?”

“The fact that you literally never curse.”

I giggled. “I don’t like cursing,” I explained. “It just makes me angrier—and it doesn’t solve anything. So…”

“There we go, complete goody-two-shoes.” He crossed his arms, obviously satisfied with himself. “I win.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, my turn then. You go to concerts regularly.”

He laughed. “If I had money, you bet your ass I would!”

“Ooh, I was close—does that count?”

“Nope,” he decided, popping the P. “My turn: you always drive with both hands on the steering wheel.”

“No, I’m calling that one; that goes with the goody-two-shoes thing!”

“What, no, it doesn’t!”

I just laughed at him, and he joined along. Whatever guess I made next was wrong, but we continued on that way for a while anyway, barely listening to the radio. He managed to guess that I wanted to be a cop; that I wore socks to bed every night, no matter what, that I’d been popular in high school. I’d gotten zero information about him in return.

“I’m terrible at this,” I complained, throwing my hands over my face and laughing into them.

“Well, you obviously can’t read people very well,” he teased in reply.

I turned my face to him. “Oh yes, teach me your ways—what was it about my personality that keyed you in to the fact that I can’t fall asleep without socks on?”

He smirked, examining his nails as he reclined back on his bed. “A true magician doesn’t share his secrets.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Oh, of course, how silly of me.”

“You’re sassy once you get to know someone, huh?” he muttered, cocking an eyebrow at me.

I felt my face flush with heat and desperately wished I could hide my face in a pillow or something. I settled for hiding it in my hands instead. “I’m not _sassy_ ,” I giggled.

“Uh, huh, _sure_.” He waved his hand at me. “And you do know the washer’s been done for, like, an hour now, right?”

I shot up. “What, really?” My face felt even warmer. I hadn’t even noticed, too caught up in talking to him. From the look on Jean’s face, I could tell he’d known for a while.

I slid off the couch, shoulders hunched in embarrassment. “I’ll, uh—I’ll go check that out, then.”

He waved me off as I hurried back upstairs to start the dryer. Time really had flown as we’d danced and talked—the washer wasn’t even warm when I touched it. I pulled out the shirts and replaced them with jeans as I shoved the wet wad of clothes in my hands into the dryer.

And although I was embarrassed to have completely forgotten about the laundry whilst talking to Jean, I couldn’t help but smile about it. I knew that I could talk to him all day. When was the last time I’d had a friend like that?

Back downstairs, Jean started right where we’d left off, abandoning the guessing game and asking me questions outright.

“I live in Trost, so now you have to tell me where you live.” So I did, thankful that he didn’t ask why I’d moved there in the first place.

“Can you really speak Spanish?” No, I couldn’t, and although I blushed as I answered, he didn’t tell me that I should know if I were really Hispanic. I couldn’t describe even in my own head exactly how much that meant to me.

“Why do you work at Blockbuster if you don’t like it?”

I had to think about that one, snuggling into the couch cushions and squinting at the air above the TV. “Well… I got the job easily enough. And Eren—my friend—works there, and I’d miss working with him. And it pays.” I shrugged. “I just can’t imagine leaving, you know?”

He nodded, still looking up at the ceiling as he reclined back on his bed. “I know how you feel.”

I sighed, hummed as I shifted around onto my back. “What about you? What’s your job? Do you like it?”

He stayed silent until I looked over at him. That was when he decided to say something. “You wouldn’t want to know about my job. Besides, I don’t do it anymore.”

I blinked at him for a moment before sitting up. “What do you mean, I wouldn’t want to know?”

He just sighed again, keeping his gaze locked on the ceiling. “Well. Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly the most legitimate of jobs.”

I frowned at that. “It was… illegal?” I bit my lip. “What did you do that was illegal?”

He smiled a little, softly, sadly, and then sat up to look at me curiously. “Why don’t you guess?”

I sank back into my seat, looking away from him. He grinned—I could see it in the corner of my eye. “Don’t look so shell-shocked, Bodt. It’s not like I killed people, or something.”

I allowed myself to smile, just a tiny bit, before glancing up at him through my eyelashes. “Darn, that was my first guess: professional assassin.”

He laughed at that. “Yeah, nice try. You’ve got two guesses left.”

I grinned, tilting my head to study him. “Hmm… Were you a bank robber?”

He scrunched his nose up at me. “Yeah, sure, that’s me. Heist Master Kir—…“ He stopped suddenly, eyebrows drawing together to create a confused expression.

I leaned closer to him, worry in my throat. “Jean? Are you—“

“I like this song,” he interrupted, looking away.

I squinted at him. He’d started to say something and then just stopped. Obviously it had bothered him, but something told me that he didn’t want me to pry—he didn’t want to dwell on that momentary confusion.

So instead of asking more, I turned my attention to the song.

It was softer, slower—which was probably why I hadn’t noticed at first. Now that I did, I smiled at the lyrics filling the air just above the rumble of the dryer. “If I lay here, if I just lay here…”

“It’s called Chasing Cars,” I told him, leaning my chin in one hand and smiling absently at the radio. “I haven’t heard it in a long time.”

“Weird name,” he murmured.

I shrugged. “It’s a line in the song.”

“Still weird.”

I hummed at that, and then glanced over at him again. He still looked a little bothered, eyebrows pulled together into a troubled expression. I glanced down, crossed my ankles, and finally sighed. “So, um, your job—“

“Maybe we should quit with the guessing game,” he interrupted, and I glanced up at him again. He flashed me a smirk that felt a little too off to be sincere. “I mean, you’re still shit at it. I think you should put a little more thought into your next guess.”

Which I knew was really just his way of telling me to drop the subject. It hurt; my chest ached at the thought that maybe he didn’t trust me with his secret.

I had to shake my head of the thought. Of course he didn’t trust me. We’d been having so much fun, laughing and talking and getting to know each other like old friends that had been separated for too long… but that didn’t mean we _were_ friends. I had to remind myself that I’d only known Jean for a few days, really. Not even a week yet. It was easy to forget when he smiled at me, head haloed by golden sunlight.

“You any good at slow dances?” he whispered suddenly.

I jerked my eyes back to him, feeling my face flush. “Oh, I… Well it’s been a while, so I don’t really know anymore.”

He looked down at his hands in his lap, studying his twisted fingers. Finally he raised one hand, smiling at it. “My left pinky—see it?” He sighed. “I broke it dancing with a girl at a school dance.”

My eyes widened, and I gasped in surprise. “Oh, my gosh, how on earth—“

“I, uh, got a little frisky on the dance floor,” he confessed, chuckling softly to himself as he cradled his hand in his other one. “Grabbed her ass, and her best friend saw it. She got so mad that she ran across the room and put me in a headlock. I managed to claw the crazy bitch off of me, but poor little pinky here didn’t make it out alive.”

I had to cover my mouth with both hands to hold back the laughter coming out of me. “That’s insane!” I guffawed, bending over at the stomach to bury my face in my knees.

He was laughing too, hard, his voice loud and clear throughout the house. “Tell me about it! Guess it taught me my lesson though.”

“How did you manage to break so many fingers, anyway?” I asked softly, my laughter slowly fading out.

He smirked, his laughter fading as well. “I’m a troublemaker, I guess. The real question is how I managed to break them all on different occasions.”

I squinted at him, grinning. “What happened to them all then?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Long stories,” he replied. “I’ll tell you about them, maybe. Some day.”

I smiled, more to myself than him. “I look forward to it.”

He went silent at that, and I was almost afraid to look up and see the expression on his face. Incredulous or confused or annoyed—whatever his expression really was, I’d rather pretend he looked happy about it.

“The song ended,” he whispered, and I dared to glance up at him.

His eyes were directed at the radio, where the music of Chasing Cars had faded into a different song. I looked over at the radio too, frowning at the gentle hum of some Coldplay song. “Do you want me to restart it?” I asked, before I even knew I was opening my mouth.

I looked over to see him smile at me. “Yeah. Sure.”

I smiled and nodded, moving over to radio so that I could restart Chasing Cars. I stood still in front of the radio for a moment, humming along to the beginning notes, until Jean sighed, “Marco? Can I say something totally lame?”

I glanced at him over my shoulder. “You can say whatever you want.”

He shrugged, hunching his shoulders a bit as I focused my attention on the radio again. “I… I like talking to you. A lot.”

I knew I was turning red, because I liked it too. I liked talking to Jean— _loved_ it, even. “Me too,” I managed to whisper. Before he could say anything more, I waved my hand at him, and said, “And tomorrow’s Sunday, so we can talk even more tomorrow. I don’t even have chores to do.”

His smile was faint but sincere, and I could _feel_ it. I could feel it, even through the glass of the TV screen, even through the heat of the air, even through the tremble of my hands on the radio. I smiled back at him and wondered if he could feel it too. “I’d like that,” he told me, and something about the way he said it—or maybe it was the golden light in his room or the warmth in mine—made it feel just as sincere as his smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS TOOK FOREVER, OH MY GOD, I'M SO SORRY. Also, it's really long, like over twenty pages, oh my.  
> So, I know this probably feels like filler, but trust me, it's important. I promise, the main plot will thicken very soon. Anyway I changed a few things in the tags and I changed the summary, so yes, you're not seeing things. (=  
> Love you, readers! Thank you for waiting so long, I'll try to get the next one out sooner haha.  
> (Also, yes, it is here that we break the theme naming for the chapters, I couldn't keep it up anymore, I am sorry.)

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, then thank you for reading my work. =D I hope you liked it, because you're my audience, and I have a lot more.  
> If you would like to track updates for this fic on tumblr or ask me questions or something, then my writing side blog on tumblr is novelistangel.tumblr.com.  
> If you'd like to follow my beta-reader (and please do, because they're awesome and really nice and helpful!), you can do that at fantummwithanf.tumblr.com.  
> Please leave a comment if you liked it. Thanks again for reading!


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